Air America breaking news: "USA to fingerprint ALL visitors !!!"

In article ,
James Robinson wrote:

Nobody seriously suggests that trains would be competitive with aircraft
for 3000 miles.

Actually, people in this thread have. Look back a couple of days.

But for transportation, they're insanely easier to target.

Insanely? If they are so easy, why didn't the IRA, Basques, Red Army
Brigade, or Bader Meinhof take more advantage of that weakness?

Not as flashy.

Note the *three* separate attempts at hitting high-speed rail in Europe
in the last few weeks (the Spanish bomb, the French extortion attempt,
and the German derailing try). All low-dollar, minimal effort,
high-return operations.

The next attack might be in the lineup for tickets for Disney World,
at a shopping center during Christmas shopping, on a ferry boat, and
so on.

Small areas, compared to even *one* short-distance train track.

Have you been on the Staten Island ferry lately?

Nope, but unless they've bought new supertanker-sized ferries, they're
still pretty much limited to hitting them at two places on land, or
trying a water-launched attack (not as easy as it looks).

On the other hand, a 100 mile train track has one hundred linear miles
of potential target. There's no real way to get around that.

And while it takes some work to kill a plane or a ship, all it takes for
high-speed rail is to drop something heavy and solid on the tracks at
the right time, or break the tracks right before the train gets there.
Witness the German attack, which was just some steel pieces bolted to
the tracks (thank goodness the people who tried it underengineered their
fittings).

--
cirby at cfl.rr.com

Remember: Objects in rearview mirror may be hallucinations.
Slam on brakes accordingly.

Richard Steiner wrote:

I find it somewhat shocking that citizens of the US are being portrayed
as all lining up behind their leadership. That simply isn't happening.



You should search CNN.com on their polling data from the past year.
Or even on their broadcasts (notably Aaron Brown's NewsNight).
People pouring out bottles of French wine a year ago ... "freedom
fries" ... "French Laundry" in Sacramento, CA getting defaced (it's
owned by naturalized citizens from Lebanon, where they do speak
French). All those clever and witty quotes of Homer Simpson's
"cheese munching surrender monkeys".

Even now, the NYT and Washington Post articles have a tone that
Paris and Berlin need to make up with Washington ...

gld

Following up to Kid E. Poole

this is an english language ng.

Nonsense. This is a multi-lingual newsgroup. Use
whatever language you like. Or in your case, Marie,
feel free to make pedantic grammar corrections
followed by egregious grammatical errors in any
language you almost understand.

of course, silly me! :-)
--
Mike Reid
"Art is the lie that reveals the truth" P.Picasso
Walk-Photo-Wasdale-Thames- Walk-eat-drink-London "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk" -- you can email us@ this site
Eat-walk-Spain "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" -- dontuse@ all, it's a spamtrap

On Wed, 07 Apr 2004 00:14:48 -0700, "Gary L. Dare"
wrote:

Richard Steiner wrote:

I find it somewhat shocking that citizens of the US are being portrayed
as all lining up behind their leadership. That simply isn't happening.



You should search CNN.com on their polling data from the past year.
Or even on their broadcasts (notably Aaron Brown's NewsNight).
People pouring out bottles of French wine a year ago ... "freedom
fries" ... "French Laundry" in Sacramento, CA getting defaced (it's
owned by naturalized citizens from Lebanon, where they do speak
French). All those clever and witty quotes of Homer Simpson's
"cheese munching surrender monkeys".

Even now, the NYT and Washington Post articles have a tone that
Paris and Berlin need to make up with Washington ...

gld

Let me get this straight. Washington said we're going to invade Iraq
because of their WMDs, we want you to support us. Paris and Berlin
said, there are no WMDs, so we won't support your invasion. Washington
invaded Iraq, there were no WMDs, and now Washington wants Paris and
Berlin to make up? Americans must be falling off their chairs laughing
at their government!
--==++AJC++==--

Following up to AJC

Americans must be falling off their chairs laughing
at their government!

*should* be.
--
Mike Reid
"Art is the lie that reveals the truth" P.Picasso
Walk-Photo-Wasdale-Thames- Walk-eat-drink-London "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk" -- you can email us@ this site
Eat-walk-Spain "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" -- dontuse@ all, it's a spamtrap

On Wed, 07 Apr 2004 08:46:09 +0100, The Reids
wrote:

Following up to AJC

Americans must be falling off their chairs laughing
at their government!

*should* be.

How can they not be, given the evidence?
--==++AJC++==--

AJC wrote:
Americans must be falling off their chairs laughing
at their government!

*should* be.

How can they not be, given the evidence?

Because they beleive the spin made by the Bush regime and the USA media as
well as the Democrats and conveniently forget what the USA's true allies had
been telling it all along.

Where the UN failed in in the security council trying to pass a resolution
calling the invasion illegal the day after it began. The USA and UK would have
vetoed it, and it could have then gone to the general assembly for general vote.

Kofi Anan could have then gone on USA TV stating categorically that the USA
has absolutely no UN mandate to invade Iraq and that because Iraq had not
attacked the USA, there were no laws that would allow a country to
pre-emptively attack another. Anan may have lost his job next time his
mandante needs to be renewed by members (where the USA has a lot of
influence), but he may have had sufficient impact to make the US media and
the democratic party turn against the Bush regime.

But right now, nothing will be done until the US elections. And unless the
democrats really start to attack the Bush regime for its lies and mistakes on
Iraq, the regime will either be re=elected, or will be thrown out without any
impeachement or legal repercussiosn for their illegal actions and lies.

"The Reids" wrote in message
...
Following up to Marie Lewis

Not showing off: there is nothing particularly remarkable about speaking
French.

Millions of people do that.

this is an english language ng.
--

Is it? What about people who do not speak English? Are they barred? Who
says so?

Here in rec.travel.air, nobody spake unto us, saying:
Richard Steiner wrote:

I find it somewhat shocking that citizens of the US are being portrayed
as all lining up behind their leadership. That simply isn't happening.

Why then are the media continuing the impression that there is a solid
support for the invasion of Iraq and all of the measures taken with the
pretense that they are to combat terrorism ?

That would be an excellent question.

If there were a significant portion of americans who are against the current
government, why then did the democrats support that government instead of
pointing out all the lies and mistakes/errors prior to the war beginning ?

It's one thing to tentatively go along with the initial invasion based
on the information available at the time (and also taking into account
the potential political backlash of not supporting the leader of the
country immediately after 9/11), and quite another to continue to agree
with the subseqent actions taken in Iraq by the current administration.

The actions in Iraq, the stated and perceived contexts in which those
actions were (and are) taken, and the available information about the
situation there both now and before the initial invasion have been in
constant flux over that entire period of time.

When both the media and the opposition fail to challenge a government,
it is because there is solid support from the population.

Many of the people I know who are against the current actions in Iraq
were actually supportive of them initially, but as time has gone on it
has become apparent that the current US administration was not exactly
forthright about the information it actually had at the time.

--
-Rich Steiner --- http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner --- Eden Prairie, MN
OS/2 + eCS + Linux + Win95 + DOS + PC/GEOS + Executor = PC Hobbyist Heaven!
Applications analyst/designer/developer (14 yrs) seeking employment.
See web site above for resume/CV and background.

Richard Steiner wrote:
It's one thing to tentatively go along with the initial invasion based
on the information available at the time (and also taking into account
the potential political backlash of not supporting the leader of the
country immediately after 9/11),

Sorry, but the information available before the invasion was totally
worthless. I saw on February 5th, intelligence experts tear apart those
famouns "evidence" pieces presented to the UN by Powell. Now, had the
Democrats watched TV outside the USA, they would have seen those and would
have realised how the USA was embarking on such a false pretense for an invasion.

And all of the USA's shenenigans against the UN, not allowing the UN to
complete its work and going as far as actively discrediting Blix should have
been way enough ammunition for the Democrats to oppose the bush regime.

It would not have been hard for then to point to all the lies, lack of
evidence and the fact that Iraq was no threath to the USA, and most certaintly
not such an immediate threath requiring UN inspectors to widthdraw.

I am sorry, but there was NO EXCUSE for the democrats to support this. Had
there been sufficient opposition to the Bush regime, then those "right wing"
americans wouldn't have been able to label the "few" who opposed it as "unpatriotic".

I read that infamous "dossier" that had been made available on the British
govt's web site. Even I could see a total lack of real evidence in that
dossier which was made up of very old information of what they had found
before the UN destroyed or witnessed/verified destruction of the banned
weaponse during the 1990s. Then they go and pretend they are potentially all
still there ready to be fired within 45 minutes, with absoutely no evidence
that Iraq had actually rebuilt its factories etc.

Sorry, but again, I can't understand how anyone would have believed that this
constituted sufficient evidence that an urgent invasion was required.

The Bush regime may have dismissed its allies opposition to the invasion. But
why didn't the democrast meet with DeVillepin and others who opposed the USA
invasion to hear their side of the story and the french/german/russian
evidence that the USA evidence was faulty ?

No, the democrats didn't want to be labeled unpatriotic and made damned sure
nonbody saw the other side of the coin. Kerry is in a way a liability to the
democrats because he support the war crimes commited by the USA. And lets not
get into Gantanamo bay concentration camp. Where are the democrats in this ?
The whole world outside the USA calls this totally against human rights, and
even the supreme court of the USA has agreed that it has a right to rule on
the constitutionality of this concentration camp. Yet, where are the calls for
impeachement because your current government has broken the constitution's
obligation for due legal process ?