Like I Said
I assume that a lot of you are familiar with the Underpants Gnomes from the animated series South Park. They were observed stealing underpants and then questioned as to why they did it.
Well, the Gnomes had a business plan:
Phase 1: Steal the Underpants.
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit!
They didn’t know what they were going to do in Phase 2, but they started Phase 1.
Of course, this is much the same as the Republican budget plans:
Phase 1: Cut taxes for the 1%.
Phase 2: The Market does something ?
Phase 3: Prosperity!
I was reminded of this thought process when discussing the newest iteration of Total Information Awareness, TrapWire:
Phase 1: Gather as much Data as possible.
Phase 2: Have computers do something with the Data?
Phase 3: We catch all the “Terrorists”!
Well the NYPD decided to implement a smaller version with the special “Demographics Unit” created in conjunction with the CIA. Recently the head of the unit had to testify under oath about its activities in a deposition. We now know that after six years of intensive, intrusive, legally-questionable spying by NYPD “Demographics Unit” [racial profiling squad] these methods yielded: nothing, nada, zip, zero. No leads, no arrests, no warnings of attacks, no “terrorists” identified – NOTHING!
Like I’ve been saying from the start – there is no magic solution, there is no shortcut, there is only good, old-fashioned police work. You walk and you talk. Slowly, but surely, you find out what’s going on.
Instead of wasting money on this loser of a program, they could have been sending officers to classes on comparative religion or training them to speak enough of the languages involved to show the communities that they were respected. You can’t do this from a squad car, you have to walk the streets in the community so people get to know you while you get to know them. You build trust and people will talk to you.
5 comments
What the hell am I going to do now with my stock in Hanes underwear?
Do we know if Hanes makes underwear for Mormons?
As long as the Gnomes keep working, Hanes should keep selling, so it’s probably a safe bet, certainly safer than stock in Bank of America.
Given all of the data all of the various groups are collecting, you would think that someone would be able to explain what is going on in the economy if it isn’t a lack of demand caused by all of the millions of people who have no jobs and no money to spend.
I suspect that in this political climate, it is far more advantageous to a party in power to APPEAR to be doing something about terrorism than actually to be doing something to prevent terrorism. Bruce Schneier named this phenomenon “security theater”; I believe it comes on on PBS at 8:00PM Monday evening, beginning with an animated intro sequence left over from Edward Gorey (hey, he’s already dead; they don’t have to pay him) and is categorized as “contemporary fiction.”
Steve – Security theater, exactly.
Bryan — you mean the NYPD ought to act like a police department, rather than an army of occupation complete with their own tanks? HERESY! Why, if they did that, they might have to actually, like, put their own safety on the line or something, instead of being able to march around in jackboots hippie-punching (where the only risk to life or limb is if one of their own horses step on their foot). Actually work for a living, instead of being able to look spiffy marching around in jackboots? What’s the fun in that?! 😈
– Badtux the Snarky Penguin
I’m more than sick of the ‘magical thinking’ that pervades the so-called ‘leadership’ of this country and most of the world. They believe that everything just suddenly appears, because they don’t have any concept of the long series of tiny steps that went into the ‘break-through’.
They expect technology to provide an answer, when they don’t even know what the question is.
They only thing our current system does with any level of success is push people on the edge into becoming ‘terrorists’.