Off Topic Bill Nicholson Arms

You have. The death of Roger Moore is interlinked with world peace.

 

Connery was more in keeping with Fleming's Bond, albeit that he was Scottish rather than the upper middle class Englishman of the books.
Moore was aged between 45 and 58 when he played Bond. He was too old .
When he paid Templar, he was more like Bond.

 

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"Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."

What happened last night was an absolute tragedy, but several related events concerned me.

The moriatum on electioneering. Which is just showing them that they can bring our society to a halt, exactly what they're after.

And I saw a video of the inside of the building just after the bomb went off. People clambering all over each other, jumping over bannisters, to get to the exit. When the Bataclan was attacked, when people ran for the exits there were more of them waiting with automatic weapons. Last night could have been so much worse, we need to learn the lessons to a) stop it from happening again and b) minimising the casualties when it does happen.

 

Plenty of people who were not breaking the law had a lot to fear from from anti terrorism laws.
From the Guildford 4, Maguire 7, Birmingham 6 to Jean Charles Menzies the authorities have got it horrifically wrong.
I have no idea how to make the world safe because politicians from a lot of countries have made it a death trap for so many in so many countries.
Talking to terrorists and addressing their grievances ended terrorism associated with Ireland and I suspect that it will need a similar event to happen in this case.

But in all honesty maybe, just maybe we should stop arming and training lunatics around the world cos they are our friends. Cos at some point they will become our enemies.
We armed and supported the Argentinian Junta in the 70s and ended up at war with them in 82.
We supported and armed Saddam Hussein when he was fighting Iran in the 1980s and we know how that turned out.
We supported, trained and armed Bin Laden and the Taliban in the early 1980s when we wanted them to beat the Russians in Afghanistan.
Maybe our politicians could try learning some lessons from history.

 

Not to mention the fact that many of these deeply-rooted problems were created when a group of pompous British and French army generals sat down with a ruler, a pencil and a map of the world...

 

There is so much sense spoken on this board it is a pleasure to know you guys.

 

I'm very sorry for everyone who suffered in the latest attack. But statistics tell me the things I should be worried about are heart attacks and cancer, and that I'm hundreds of times more likely to die in a car crash than in a terrorist attack. That being the case, it's not something that crosses my mind, though perhaps it might if I lived in a city that had ever seen a terrorist attack. In any case, I'm struck by how many people benefit from terrorism. The US defense industry has got a bogeyman to justify untold trillions that should have been cut when the USSR folded, and never mind they've done jack **** to actually prevent terrorism. Friendly countries get millions from us, unfriendly countries get millions from somewhere, and if somebody's dad walks into the US consulate and says his son is going to commit a terrorist act, the trillions we spend on fatherland defense aren't enough to actually do anything about it. You could look it up. Fatherland defense snoops viewed it, apparently as an unwanted interruption to watching internet porn.

 

No intrusion whatsoever.

The idea you can trade off security against freedom (which effectively means increasing repression against the innocent) is a very dangerous path. The dangers are not as obvious as they are difficult to measure, but just because freedom can't be measured in terms of, say, people affected by terrorism doesn't mean that it doesn't have value. Being free is possibly the most "valuable" thing we have, and to restrict that to save me from terrorism is not a price I am prepared to pay. I am just about to drive to work and the chance of me getting injured or killed in the next hour are significantly greater than being killed by a terrorist in my entire lifetime. The Government has a responsibility to protect it's citizens from premature and preventable death it's true, but is the cause so important? An underfunded NHS kills multiples more people than terrorists could ever do, the result as far as I'm concerned is the same. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't "bother" about terrorism, but the more emphasis we give it the more we do exactly what the terrorists want.

On the day we hear that we will not be bullied by terrorism, one or a very few people have stopped our election!

 

Spot on Vimhawk since 911 we have seen the freedom in this world decline but is it a safer place for it No ...

 

Very well said vimhawk

 

Politicians are extremely bad at dealing with threat. Their response is nearly always counter productive. The drug problem has increased by 10000's of percent since making drugs illegal and terrorism increases each time we increase legislation.

 

Good.

No businesses should be telling the authorities that some people are buying very
large quantities of stuff like hydrogen peroxide etc from them, as that is an
"intrusion" into what people do with their money.

 

How do you know that?
Have you any idea how many deadly acts of terror have been thwarted?

 

No. I don't regard that as personal intrusion. Businesses should absolutely keep a register of materials that can be used for bomb making. As long as we realise that there is not a 100% foolproof method of detection and that the closer we try to get to perfect security the proportionally greater impact there will be. For example a completely legitimate business user might stock all sorts of chemicals or whatever, and someone steals it from them. Or they have an employee that rips it off. Do we check every employee and dismiss those that have a security services have an interest in? Is this likely to rehabilitate such people (most of whom will never carry out an attack) or drive them to be more radical? Is the demonisation and profiling of certain people going to make the situation better or worse? So yes, let the security services do their job, but they cannot have absolute power.

 

OK, when I need to get somewhere fast is it OK if I drive at 155 mph then? Making me stick to the speèd limit clearly restricts my freedom and letting a speed camera take pictures of me doing 155 mph is clearly an intrusion. Furthermore, restricting my freedom to drink alcohol is very intrusive therefore should I be allowed to drink 10 pints before I drive?

The answer is obviously no. My point is that some intrusive laws are needed for the good of everyone.

 

Am I alone in thinking it highly cynical the way the media have been tripping over each other in order to find the official Face of the Manchester Bombing™?

First it was that girl who had previously had her photo taken with Ariana Grande, but she was rapidly shunted out of the spotlight when photos of the eight year-old girl who was killed began to circulate, and I find this sort of thing utterly tasteless, for the simple reason it's trying to quantify the shock and grief of countless people into a single image that'll sell the most papers, which is almost as sociopathic as that BBC Three sitcom writer tweeting a screencap of his opportunistic smear because he wanted to bait a second reaction out of people.

 

These laws don't stop people speeding or drink driving. Thousands are convicted every day of both offences.
But most rational people will think about the consequences of their actions - including the cost to themselves - and moderate their behaviour accordingly.
Terrorists are not rational. The recent incidents of terrorism appear to be perpetrated by completely irrational people. They hold beliefs and values, which are at odds with almost everyone else in society. Making additional laws which unnecessarily restrict the freedom of the many are highly unlikely to prevent the actions of a few extreme sociopaths. Making and using a crude nail bomb involves some small degree of sophistication, but driving a car into a crowd of people, stabbing someone with a knife etc does not. If an extremist decides to commit an atrocity on a random day in these circumstances, there's little or nothing the most comprehensive and well executed security measures could do to prevent it.
The mantra about security is aimed to give reassurances to people that everything is being done to protect us from these events.
But in reality, what can be done when nobody has enough information about who the terrorists are, how many of them exist, where they are from or how and when they are likely to strike.

 

Some unsavoury activities are by definition only going to be uncovered by
intrusive acts, whether conducted at the individual or authorities level.

 

And if you can cogently be shown that this information could be
acquired. but it will require various intrusive acts to do so, what then ??