TheAgitator.com
21 Responses to “Weekend Linkfest/Open Thread”
Leave a Reply
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivs 2.5 License.
Site Features
- Home
- Advertise
- About Radley Balko
- Publications
- Speaking Info
- Multimedia
- Resume
- Picasa Photos
- Recommendations
- Traffic Stats
- RSS Feed
Buy One- Buy Agitator Gear
-
-
$12/month Recurring Donation
$6/month Recurring Donation
- My Amazon wishlist
-
Site Credits
On the cell phone disruption: not only is it reactionary, it goes against tons of anecdotal evidence that cell phone use has been good for helping keep people from panicking, helps keep the authorities alerted, and helps post attack investigators piece together event timelines. Even in Iraq I’m pretty sure electronic disruption of cell phones was fairly limited in both time and area, and that was a war zone where cells were being used daily as enemy communications and to set off explosives. This plan doesn’t sound limited at all.
As for the Nigerian thing, this may sound very culturally insensitive, but if a lot of drivers really think helmets contain black magic then government paternalism is the least of their worries.
Great idea. Disrupt all communication in the attack area. Sure the terror stricken civilians won’t be able to call out, but at least it will confuse the terrorists a bit.
Then we can drop some really big bombs on the area. Sure there will be a bunch civilian casualties, but it will kill the terrorists, too!
Sacrificing a few good guys is a small price to pay to get the bad guys. Just ask anyone in Law Enforcement or the Federal government (or, for that matter, anyone who supposes themselves to be safe from the policy).
Or, you know, the terrorists might just plan to use a different way to communicate with each other.
The cell phone jamming is just a bad idea for all the reasons already cited but if they really wanted to do this wouldn’t be easier, cheaper and more effective just to ask the carriers to shut down the towers? Jamming would be spotty at best but shutting down the cell towers would be absolute.
Book of ettiquette link doesn’t work.
cell phone jamming would be a fantastic tactic for terrorists or cops to use in New York. The victims stay the same.
Can we start a site listing all the GOOD government ideas. I can probably keep all content current by working 1 or 2 seconds a year.
Too bad NYC won’t do the same thing Mumbai should, and legalize CCW. Or carry at all. Or ownership, come to think of it.
From the Holder article:
Holder was part of an increasingly unhealthy culture when he served in DOJ. It seems reasonable to request that the senators on the Judiciary Committee ask him whether he, like the president-elect, will be a change agent or will simply preserve the status quo. Based on recent history, it is far more important that the next AG respect the Constitution, rather than launch some new scorched-earth crusade against the evil-doer du jour.
Large portions of the country seem to be neglecting to consider the idea that change is not always positive. If Holder ordered the entire DOJ to utterly and blatantly violate the Constitution, that would be being an agent of change, too.
In the spirit of the open thread, death row inmate pulls out and eats his left eye.
http://www.mysanantonio.com/37357149.html
Apparently, he did this before, while he was waiting for trial:
“While in the Grayson County Jail in Sherman, Thomas plucked out his right eye before his trial later in 2004.”
Finally, the most interesting sentence follows immediately, which really ought to be investigated: “A judge subsequently ruled he was competent to stand trial.”
Here’s the thing about the cell phone jamming. had we had it on 9/11, the passengers of United 93 would never have found out what was going on and our Capitol would have been destroyed.
What a great idea!
Heh. Couple of minor find/replaces and Holder makes complete sense.
It has already been beaten to death, but I must post my beef with the cell phone jamming in NYC. Not only would it prevent the victims from being able to call the police and give them “eyes and ears” in the room, something they might find useful, but they fail to realize that other signals would work just as well, if not better than cell phones.
What would stop them from using short-wave radios, or CB radios, or walkie-talkies, or even police scanners? Are they going to try and jam ALL radio signals in the area? I’m quite sure that would be an almost impossible feat (plus it would kill their own communication abilities).
Sometimes, security has to be weighed against functionality and reason. Just like in a computer network, where the only safe computer is one that can’t be turned on and that is not connected to any network, there is no way to make any city 100% safe and still have it serve it’s purpose. If you make a change, there is always a criminal that knows how to get around it. It’s how the world has always been and it will remain so until Armageddon.
“If Holder ordered the entire DOJ to utterly and blatantly violate the Constitution, that would be being an agent of change, too.”
Ummmm, no. That would make him an agent of continuity, given the past 8 years.
Sorry Seeker, I’m no fan of the soon to be late administration, but things could certainly be much, much worse on that front. Hopefully, we will not get to experience first hand just how much so.
Michael Chaney that was pure genius. Thanks!
Couldn’t the government just contact NCIS of CBS fame and have them triangulate the terrorist’s cell phones, then take a satellite photo and then send in Mark Harmon and his team to save the day.
Couldn’t they?
Well?
Ziva is friggin’ hot!
Regarding the NYC police department plans to jam cell phones:
What they are really trying to shut down is the citizen-reporter using a cell phone camera to record and TRANSMIT police department misconduct.
The proliferation of cell phone cameras in the hands of the citizenry has made it much, much more difficult for the police to simply stonewall behind a Blue Wall of Silence regarding misconduct by fellow police officers.
It would actually be more advantageous to the police to EAVESDROP on the terrorists cell phones in REALTIME to understand what their plans and capabilities are.
No, this is a police ploy to jam pesky citizen-reporters, pure and simple.
Radley – why do you need your HTML unfucked? Don’t you have monkey butlers do all of your coding for you? You just hand them paragraphs and links and they do all the other shit for you. Right?
“He said 28 arrests had been made in Kano. Newspapers have reported more arrests in other cities. Those detained are fined and their bikes impounded until they buy helmets.”
Don’t worry people of Nigeria, the government is here to “protect” you by taking the money you don’t have, impounding your livelihood and further impoverishing your family!
Livejournal pulled down the etiquette link, because it was scans of a book produced in the 1960s.
Here you go:
http://trypanophobic34.livejournal.com/163746.html#cutid1