![](\"http:\/\/cyber.law.harvard.edu\/blogs\/static\/dowbrigade\/youarebeingwatched.jpg\")
Ratchet
\n up the terror alert level again folks. No, not the
\n multicolored Spectrum of Alarm, just the nagging, red-lining awareness
\n that the Bad Men are out there and ready to strike, at us, here in the
\n homeland, although we cannot
\n know when, or where, or how.<\/p>\n
\nOsama bin Laden recently asked the Jordanian militant Musab al-Zarqawi
\n to consider planning attacks outside Iraq and possibly on American
\n soil, a United States intelligence official said Monday.<\/em> (New
\n York Times<\/a>)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nWe are sure the threat is real. We choose to believe
\n the government on this one. Even paranoids have real enemies. The terrorists
\n exist, although
\n if they did not the present administration would have had to invent them
\n or inspire them somehow. But
\n are we
\n alone in feeling that there is a risk of Calling Wolf in these repeated,
\n disquieting, non-specific warnings and advisories?<\/p>\nQuite
\n frankly, we are surprised that Al Queda has NOT struck us in the
\n heartland since 9\/11. Lord knows it wouldn’t be hard.
\n We are still an open society, although that is starting to change. People
\n can still move freely within our borders, and cops can’t even ask for
\n our IDs unless they see us breaking a law. Our borders themselves
\n are
\n as porous as chicken wire in a cyclone, unless you are a foreign student
\n who wants to support American higher education.<\/p>\nPerhaps Al Queda is searching for a new blow on the level
\n of 9\/11, or wants to somehow surpass it, and therefore will not deign
\n to lower their standards with the kind of heartless mundane murder inflicted
\n by their minions regularly
\n in
\n the Holy Land. Certainly, the 9\/11 attack surpassed all reasonable
\n expectations, in its precision and results. It is the clockwork execution
\n which strikes true terror in the hearts of thinking Americans. Anyone
\n who has ever organized a tour group knows it is almost impossible to
\n get 19 people in the air at the same time, even if they are all booked
\n on the same flight.<\/p>\nBut it is no secret that we are vulnerable to a pandora’s box of
\n wicked tricks which would have potentially disastrous effects on the
\n American economy, culture and psyche. For example (and here we are
\n only imagining the imagining of our enemies, in order to get a handle
\n on the threat and in the process scare the begeezus out of ourself
\n and our readers). Frankly, we are surprised
\n that the following avenues of attack, none of which would be very expensive
\n or difficult and all of which would
\n produce
\n serious
\n damage to the U.S. in one way or another, have yet to be tried.<\/p>\nFirst, we are surprised that no one has tried to shoot off one of
\n those shoulder-fired missiles at a commercial airliner. Hell,
\n you wouldn’t even have to hit the damn plane. Just the confirmed
\n fact that people were actually firing missiles at airliners would gut
\n the
\n air
\n travel
\n and tourism
\n industries. The media would be all over it like black on Rice.
\n The public would panic. Airlines, many already walking the thin red
\n line towards insolvency,
\n would be
\n pushed over the edge.<\/p>\nThere are hundreds of thousands of these rockets in circulation
\n around the world, many produced right here in the USA and sold or swapped
\n out to our "allies", only to somehow end up
\n on the international black market. You could hide one in a golf bag. How hard
\n would it be to mount, maybe a heat seeking model, below-decks on
\n a private
\n yacht,
\n set
\n to
\n fire
\n by remote control
\n from somewhere else?<\/p>\nSecond, we are surprised no one has tried to leave a few backpack
\n bombs under benches in shopping malls around the heartland. Similar
\n to the attacks on trains in Spain last year, although Amtrak is such
\n a disaster already that bombing it would be redundant. Attacking malls,
\n on the other hand, would have cato strophic effects
\n on retail
\n sales
\n and the shopping habits of the grand majority of Americans who frequent
\n shopping malls. Because of the rabid enthusiasm of mainstream media
\n for stories like
\n this, even when there is no truth to them, if there were even a few
\n real bombs the story would be on every channel and site in the land,
\n and the malls would empty like the twin towers after the first plane
\n hit.
\n At
\n the
\n very least,
\n we would have to install metal detectors and armed guards at every
\n entrance to every mall in America.<\/p>\nThird, it is surprising that no one has yet tried to compromise
\n the American food supply. Food is something we already obsess
\n over, without the complication of terrorism in the mix. Look
\n at the over-the-top reaction to a couple of Mad Cows – we slaughtered
\n and
\n destroyed thousands of head of cattle, meat that could have fed hundreds
\n of thousand of
\n hungry children in India, if cows weren’t sacred over there. Imagine
\n the panic if it were discovered that some or all of the soybeans, chickpeas,
\n or maple syrup on the market , had been poisoned, or adulterated, or
\n diseased? If
\n people lost trust in the safety of the food in their supermarkets,
\n all hell would break loose, and any serious interruption in the food
\n supply would be deadly, as almost no one has a vegetable plot to fall
\n back on anymore.<\/p>\nThese three avenues of attack are relatively easy, open, and could
\n be organized on the cheap, and without even risking the lives of the
\n planners and executers. Frankly, it surprises us that they haven’t
\n been tried before now. So the questions becomes, what is the government
\n doing to protect us?<\/p>\nSince the only possible justification
\n for mulling these macabre possibilities is to analyze and evaluate
\n our preparedness and possible prevention we must ask ourselves
\n where we stand in combating, forestalling or avoiding these specific
\n areas of attack, and what the results would be should our efforts
\n fail.<\/p>\nThe bad news is that, given a determined and wily enemy fully prepared
\n to make up to the ultimate sacrifice for his or her cause, and given
\n the relatively available hardware, software and wetware needed to do
\n the job, we can’t really do bupkiss
\n to avoid the blow. Don’t forget, the guys trying to kill us are the
\n guys who invented chess, hashish, assassination cults and suicide bombings.<\/p>\nThe good news is that, given the proven resilience and economic
\n power of the American character, we believe the country can survive
\n all three of these kinds of attacks, although perhaps not without significant
\n structural change.<\/p>\nThe airline industry, for example, has been in trouble for a long time.
\n The days of freewheeling competition and cheap airfares are coming to
\n an end,
\n one way or another. El Al has shown that it is possible to protect
\n commercial airliners against both internal (hijack) threats and portable
\n missiles fired from the ground, but it costs many millions of dollars
\n PER PLANE. It will be a massive and expensive effort in the United
\n States, and will change the face of the travel industry forever. The
\n question the players are trying to figure out now is who will foot
\n the bulk of the bill, and how many people will have to die before the
\n public will swallow the new world travel order.<\/p>\nAs to the shopping malls, although the retail industry is in the
\n midst of a vicious cycle of cannibalism in a desperate but doomed attempt
\n to regain profitability, the retail giants of the past may not be worth
\n saving. This
\n is old money. Everyone know the future of retail is on-line. The malls
\n are doomed except as exotic dating domes. Who will really miss the face-to-face
\n sight of
\n our fellows
\n caught
\n up
\n in the commercial underbelly of craven capitalistic consumerism? Better
\n to exercise our avarice and greed in the privacy of our own virtual spaces.<\/p>\nFinally, the American food supply has been vulnerable and largely
\n uncontrolled for decades; produce pours in from Mexico, Asia and Latin
\n America, uninspected and undetected. This is one area we should be
\n paying attention to because of disease, pesticides, spoilage and labeling
\n fraud, quite apart from the terrorism angle. If an attack on the food
\n supply brings attention to this critical area, it might not be entirely
\n a bad thing.<\/p>\nMore attacks on America are inevitable, at least according to our
\n government and its experts. But due to the resilience of American culture,
\n which really hasn’t been tested in over a generation, and the hidden
\n preparations of the forces of law and existing order, the Dowbrigade
\n does not believe they will spell the demise of the American Empire. They
\n will, however, spawn changes that will make America in the 21st century
\n feel
\n more
\n like Israel at the height of the Intafada than the freewheeling, pre-9\/11
\n homeland
\n during
\n the
\n good old days of the twilight of the 20th century. People, get ready.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ratchet up the terror alert level again folks. No, not the multicolored Spectrum of Alarm, just the nagging, red-lining awareness that the Bad Men are out there and ready to strike, at us, here in the homeland, although we cannot know … Continue reading