I think the plan to have heavily-armed police randomly patrolling subways is a fundamentally stupid, fear-mongering, ineffective and money-wasting load of shit.

In the first counterterrorism strategy of its kind in the nation, roving teams of New York City police officers armed with automatic rifles and accompanied by bomb-sniffing dogs will patrol the city’s subway system daily, beginning next month, officials said on Friday.

Under a tactical plan called Operation Torch, the officers will board trains and patrol platforms, focusing on sites like Pennsylvania Station, Herald Square, Columbus Circle, Rockefeller Center and Times Square in Manhattan, and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

Officials said the operation would begin in March.

Financing for the program will be funneled to the Police Department and will come from a pool of up to $30 million taken from $153.2 million in new federal transit grants to the state.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Each team in the operation will comprise a bomb-sniffing dog and six officers: a dog handler and a sergeant and four officers from the Emergency Service Unit who will be outfitted in heavy, bullet-resistant vests and Kevlar helmets and will carry automatic weapons, either an M-4 rifle or an MP5 submachine gun.

This does nothing except intimidate people, waste money and promote fear. Pathetic. Atlantic Avenue is a daily stop for me. I’m not looking forward to commuting a route patrolled by some underpaid douchebag with an automatic weapon. Is the city going to equip the commuters with kevlar?

This is by far the coolest trick (that I’m way too chickenshit to actually try) that I’ve read about in a long time.

From Bruce Schneier’s blog:

If you are sitting next to someone who irritates you on a plane or train…

1. Quietly and calmly open up your laptop case.
2. Remove your laptop.
3. Boot it.
4. Make sure the person who won’t leave you alone can see the screen.
5. Open your email client to this message.
6. Close your eyes and tilt your head up to the sky.
7. Then hit this link.

Awesome.

While I’d love to to be the kind of person with the balls of titanium required to pull this prank off, I do prefer to arrive at my destination on time without a cavity search. Still, I’m totally behind shit like this.

Fear is what you make of it. Why not make it a joke? As far as I’m concerned this “Culture of Fear” shit that vomits out of my television every time I make the mistake of switching on the local or national news is one huge, shameless farce. It seems only fair for people to join in the fun. Anyone stupid enough to buy into the administration and media network’s mantra of “Live in Fear or Die” (a long, long way from the old “Live Free or Die” motto) pretty much deserves to be treated like the mindless sheep they are.

It’s 2007, time to download a brand-spanking-new counterterrorism calendar from the National Counterterrorism Center, otherwise known as the Jihad-mindful jizzwads who make their living making sure you stay very afraid. I was a little disappointed that there’s no cheesecake bikini shots of Osama Bin Ladin, but hey, it’s chock-full of info as to which dates you’re most likely to get blown up (or celebrate a holiday, if your Muslim). Armed with this calendar, all I need to do now is secure everything I own with duct-tape, cats included (unless they too are Islamic extremists. In that case, I’m so fucked) horde some batteries, beef jerky and drinking water, lock the doors and whisper softly to my invisible shotgun.

I think my favorite part of the calendar is the “Bomb Threat Call Procedures” form in the back. Upon receiving a bomb threat, I will most certainly refrain from fleeing, sit down, take a deep breath and fill out the checklist, noting that the caller had a “lisped accent”, used “foul and incoherent threat language” and there was distinct sounds of “animals, house noises and music” in the background.

I feel so much safer now. Don’t forget the counterterrorism coloring book. You might need something to do while holed-up in fear of the world. I know I will.

I was just reading this article about improper treatment of Gitmo prisoners and a little factoid jumped out at me:

“In a previously unreported allegation, one interrogator bragged to an FBI agent that he had forced a prisoner to listen to ‘Satanic black metal music for hours,’ then dressed as a Catholic priest before ‘baptizing’ him.“

I’d be very interested in knowing what music was used. What bands would be considered abusive to a Muslim inmate? I would have thought Christian Country/Western a better choice. It sure as shit would make me spill the beans after a couple hours of high volume exposure.

I love Black Metal to a near retarded degree. I like the music, the imagery and the ideals behind it. It’s depressing to hear that people are being abused with it. It’s wrong and it angers me. But, on a disassociated and aesthetic level—it kind of makes sense. I mean, it is Black Fucking Metal. Aural and psychic abuse is usually the general aim. Honestly the whole thing reads like a Black Metal video, the prison, the priest, everything.

Would this constitute good Black Metal media coverage?

Who’s the bigger supporter of terrorism? Is it a person or organization that:

• Opposes the Bush Administration?
• Opposes ultra-conservative Christian values?
• Votes Democrat?
• Thinks the Dept. of Homeland Security is a joke?
• Would rather be blown up by a terrorist than give up their rights to be protected from them?

Or is it the person or organization that gives terrorists cold hard cash to buy weapons?

I just read this article on security advice by Kevin Mitnick and I’m equal parts pissed and laughing at it. It’s a classic case of ignoring the elephant in the room and it really makes me wonder where Mitnick’s integrity is since I don’t think he’s a particularly stupid person.

He starts the article with the old “We live in dangerous times. Evil hackers can attack you with their viruses!” line and then proceeds to outline ten steps he feels will increase your safety and security. Some are common sense recommendations that I agree with:

1. Back up everything
2. Choose strong passwords
3. Be diligent with applying security updates
4. Use encryption for sensitive data
5. Disable unused services
6. Use a firewall/router to restrict/limit access to your machine
7. Encrypt your wireless networks with uber-strong passwords using WPA

All these points I agree with. All are basic, simple, common sense things everyone should do, but often do not. His other recommendations are what give me pause:

8. Use commercial antivirus products
9. Use one or more anti-spyware applications
10. Avoid Internet Explorer and disable scripts in your email client

This is where I completely disagree. Recommendations 8-10 can be simplified to one step:

1. Stop fucking using Windows already

(more…)

I was reading a Wired article about the statistics of death in the United States compared to the “Politics of Fear” type shit you see on the news left and right. To believe the news, I’d be insane to not flee New York for the hills because Al Qaeda’s going to kill my skinny, white ass any second now and if I was smart enough to head for the mountains, I should probably dig a bunker because they’re going to nuke that shit too. However, Wired points out the actual statistical reality of mortality in the States, complete with a nice little color-coded chart á la Dept. of Homeland Security’s absolutely retarded threat advisory chart.

Sanely speaking, death by terrorism ranks second to lowest (lowest being that radical, extremist, Jihad-freak: Carbon Monoxide). The flu, a hernia, driving and just about everything else you might prefer to die of all rank much, much higher.

What caught my eye, was the fact that you’re more likely to be shot by law enforcement (3949) than killed by a terrorist (3147). I wonder what the numbers might rise to if being killed by the government, such as being shipped off to Iraq or being neglected in New Orleans after Katrina were to be factored in. Who would be the bigger killer of American citizens? Al Qaeda or the Bush administration?

I, for one, am completely sick of it.

Yes, it sucked—more than I’m going to bother to try and convey.

I was (and still am) in NYC. I had to live through that day, walk through that day (all the way to Brooklyn) and deal with the next few weeks of absolute discombobulation (which, to me, was the worst - that’s when everything sets in) as to what’s safe anymore.

I had to go to work the next day, convinced I was going to die. I rode the subways every morning and for the first two months, every time the train stopped in the tunnels, a cold sweat would kick in and I was hardly the only person.

It was horrible. I wish it hadn’t happened. It did and it’s certainly affected me, my decisions and how I view things.

But it’s been five years.

Still, every time I watch the news, there it is. 9/11 is invoked left and right. I see the plane crash or at least the smoking buildings in the media every day. It’s no longer a tragedy. It’s been co-opted as a tool for politics and media. It makes me sick.

This morning, I was reading an article about a CBS interview with “Tuesday’s Children“, a group to support and represent the children who lost parents that day. The reporter was asking how they felt now and the biggest complaint, round the room, was the constant barrage of imagery from that day. A quote:

The kids [..] told 60 Minutes some of the worst memories don’t fade because the media won’t let them. [CBS Reporter Scott] Pelley got an earful about showing those pictures of 9/11 over and over again.

“Even when you’re just sitting down like eating dinner and watching TV, you’ll just have a nice conversation and then all the sudden you’ll see like pictures of 9/11. You can’t escape it. It’s just like everywhere you go its always like you’re always reminded of it somehow even in the littlest thing,” explains Amy Gardner.

“They’re showing my dad’s death and everyone else here. It’s just really offensive. Every time I see it, it brings up so much and it actually really hurts,” says Erik Abrahamson.

That pretty much sums it up for me. Here’s the link that has video and a transcript.

9/11 is now a political tool. It’s a ticket-selling, ratings-boosting tool. It’s a tool for bloated, flag-waving idiots to show how patriotic they are to everyone else. It’s disgusting. It’s sad. It’s infuriating.

Happy 9/11, everybody.

Keith Olbermann’s Commentary on Donald Rumsfeld’s speech to the American Legion National Convention is such a well-crafted and thoughtful smack upside the head that I had chills reading the transcript. Read it!!!

I’ve been bed-ridden, sick as fuck all day long. After sleeping for far too much, I started going through some old archive discs from years ago as I sweated out a fever. Most of them were damaged or corrupted, but I did find some shit I’d pretty much forgotten about.

One of the discs I found was an archive of photographs I’d taken of the World Trade Center area on September 27th, 2001. Some of the photos had been corrupted, but I was able to recover the majority of them and post them to my flickr account.

It was still a complete and total fuck-zone went I first went down there and I remember walking around with my camera, everything around me covered with a thick layer of ash and feeling like I was walking through a ghost town in winter only in reality it was September and the “snow” was actually pulverized concrete and God knows what fucking else. It’s disturbing to think I inhaled some of that stuff.

All kinds of items, hats, shoes, umbrellas, briefcases and other sorts of things were lying around, neatly stacked and out of the way, in case someone might return to reclaim them. Messages were written in the dust on the walls and everywhere possible were notes scribbled on paper, photos and desperate pleas for information on missing people. It was an extremely surreal experience.

When the planes had hit the towers, I was working on 28th Street. After watching from the roof of my building, I’d headed straight down there, mainly because I had nothing to do and didn’t know how to get home, having lived in New York for only a couple of months, but I was turned back at Canal Street by the police. I was living in Williamsburg at the time, but aside from the fact that it was located in Brooklyn, that was about as much as I knew. It took me six hours to walk home. I crossed the Manhattan bridge on foot with thousands of other people. I was hot, tired and hungry. I had no money and could find no working ATM. My cell phone didn’t work. Nothing fucking worked except my feet.

I’ve been back there several times since but I’d almost forgotten that first visit, alone and pretty fucking bewildered. There was this one jewelry store, completely abandoned and trashed. The doors must have been open when all the shit went down, because inside the place everything was covered with almost two inches of ash. Peering through the store window made me feel like I was looking into a crypt.

Anyway, here’s the link to the images:

World Trade Center photo set

Have a peek.