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Terrorism, as a justification

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) publish new proves about the Administration’s attempts to enact the Protect America Act and eviscerate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It is about negotiations between Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and members of Congress that resulted in the passage of the Protect America Act — an expansion of spying powers that undermined the Constitution and the privacy of Americans.

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Smoke billowing from the World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks described by the United Nations Security Council as “horrifying terrorist attacks.” – From Wikipedia

Human Rights Warch publish a very interesting study, “In the Name of Counter-Terrorism: Human Rights Abuses Worldwide“: “At a time when the media prominently reports the latest arrests of alleged terrorist suspects, these cases show a different human face to the war against terrorism. Just as terrorism targets innocent civilians, so too are innocent civilians becoming casualties in the international campaign against terrorism.

The Federation of American Scientists says that “Since September 11, the Bush Administration has made the distribution of security assistance a centerpiece of his “War on Terrorism.” In its haste to strengthen the “frontline” states’ ability to confront transnational terrorist threats on their soil, and to gain the cooperation of regimes of geostrategic significance to the next phases of the “War on Terrorism”, the administration is disregarding normative restrictions on U.S. aid to human rights abusers.

From more to more administrations in different countries restrain the human rights in the name of the fight against the terrorism. Even more, the terrorism is used sometimes as a political and geopolitical tool, or as an argument for some economical discriminations.

Is this a solution? Obviously not, both from economical and social reasons.

Washington Post wrote a study about the growing of the social isolation in U.S., the main conclusion being that “Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States“.

“That image of people on roofs after Katrina resonates with me, because those people did not know someone with a car,” said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. “There really is less of a safety net of close friends and confidants.”

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Australian special forces and Afghan soldiers prepare to depart on a joint patrol in September 2005 – From Wikipedia

Just let’s think a bit: if with the growing of the terrorism we get an increase in economic and especially social isolation, who is the winner? This is one of the main “benefits” of the terrorism, the social isolation. Why to give them satisfaction?

Let’s imagine: the terrorists outside and we barricaded in our houses somewhat as the medieval fortresses. Who is free and who is in prison? Is this a solution?

Modern Times Video

About this video:

By Chris Coleman with sound design by George Cicci
www.digitalcoleman.com

The original movie, “Modern Times,” featured Charlie Chaplin struggling to deal with man’s relationship to technology in the Industrial Age. We have now moved into the Age of Information in which our connection to the world around us is not only defined by technology, but the information it does or does not provide. This video examines the issues we cope with regularly such as racism, surveillance, and apathy by using imagery from specific safety brochures. These pamphlets about terrorism readiness, provided by the Department of Homeland Security, are part of a larger system designed to promote meta-fears like terrorism that serve to distract people from their everyday concerns. This animation discusses the effects of fear, apathy, and isolation, and how they are transmitted and utilized for control. The iconography seen in this video is used in very polar situations: often we see warnings with simplified bodies being harmed as a consequence of not following the rules. These illustrations evoke fear without being real or graphic. In contrast, the same simplified pictures in airplane brochures show a complete lack of alarm and are used to make one feel safe and to reduce fear and anxiety. In this animation, the flat, sterile and unemotional style mirrors the ways in which we increasingly react to the world around us. Sensation and overabundance bring apathy. People and the body become commodities. The individual continues to recede into the white noise.

Epistemology of Intelligence Agencies
Epistemology of Intelligence Agencies

About the analogy between the epistemological and methodological aspects of the activity of intelligence agencies and some scientific disciplines, advocating for a more scientific approach to the process of collecting and analyzing information within the intelligence cycle. I assert that … Read More

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