The news satire paper The Onion is going to need to step it up a notch if they’re going to keep ahead of the ridiculousness of current real news, these days, There are three articles I’ve read this week online that I at first expected to be articles from that paper; turns out they aren’t, which is scary. Or amusing. Or both.
1. Human species ‘may split in two’:
People would become choosier about their sexual partners, causing humanity to divide into sub-species, he added. The descendants of the genetic upper class would be tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent, and creative and a far cry from the “underclass” humans who would have evolved into dim-witted, ugly, squat goblin-like creatures.
2. Bush seeks to block enemies from space:
President Bush has signed an order asserting the United States’ right to deny adversaries access to space for hostile purposes.
Bush also said the United States would oppose the development of treaties or other restrictions that seek to prohibit or limit U.S. access to or use of space.
…”Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power,” the policy says. “In order to increase knowledge, discovery, economic prosperity, and to enhance the national security, the United States must have robust, effective, and efficient space capabilities.”
3. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael “Heckuva Job” Chertoff on U. S. dissidents (like me!) “becoming terrorists” through the use of the Internet:
Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Monday.
“We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the internet,” Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.
“They can train themselves over the internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination,” Chertoff said. “Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites.”
Chertoff pointed to the July 7, 2005 attacks on London’s transit system, which killed 56 people, as an example a home-grown threat.
To help gather intelligence on possible home-grown attackers, Chertoff said Homeland Security would deploy 20 field agents this fiscal year into “intelligence fusion centers,” where they would work with local police agencies.
By the end of the next fiscal year, he said the department aims to up that to 35 staffers.
Well, as long as they’re all like Michael Brown, I think I’ll be okay.
With everything the mass media has been doing to scare people, assigning the designation of “terrorist” or elevating the threat level (orange, red…) is not only critical from a legal perspective, but from a psychological. What do we need to be afraid of? Why? And for how long? What is the proper response when there is a proper fear?
To think there is never anything to be afraid of is naive at best. When I work with clients who are afraid of robbers or attack, the first thing we work with is reality: have you locked your doors? closed your windows? avoided dark alleys?
Personally I believe in the tree that falls even if I do not hear it. My experience is not the center of the universe or reality. Just because I’m enjoying a cup of coffee at Starbucks and the skies are blue doesn’t mean there aren’t things to worry about. What I and so many Americans do (perhaps too much)is trust that the government is handling the threat, dealing with the tree, we can’t see.
There’s a book out–just came out–that deals with this. I’ve been reading it on line (for free) and it’s all about viral free–what’s real, what’s perceived, what to do with real threats, what perceptions do to us. I’s called the NEXT OSAMA (J. Acosta).
We should be all be paying more attention to these things, instead of sitting benumbed in front of our TVs watching hours and hours of horror, fear mongering media events, and sexual scandal.
With everything the mass media has been doing to scare people, assigning the designation of “terrorist” or elevating the threat level (orange, red…) is not only critical from a legal perspective, but from a psychological. What do we need to be afraid of? Why? And for how long? What is the proper response when there is a proper fear?
To think there is never anything to be afraid of is naive at best. When I work with clients who are afraid of robbers or attack, the first thing we work with is reality: have you locked your doors? closed your windows? avoided dark alleys?
Personally I believe in the tree that falls even if I do not hear it. My experience is not the center of the universe or reality. Just because I’m enjoying a cup of coffee at Starbucks and the skies are blue doesn’t mean there aren’t things to worry about. What I and so many Americans do (perhaps too much)is trust that the government is handling the threat, dealing with the tree, we can’t see.
There’s a book out–just came out–that deals with this. I’ve been reading it on line (for free) and it’s all about viral free–what’s real, what’s perceived, what to do with real threats, what perceptions do to us. I’s called the NEXT OSAMA (J. Acosta).
We should be all be paying more attention to these things, instead of sitting benumbed in front of our TVs watching hours and hours of horror, fear mongering media events, and sexual scandal.