[kabelshik]

The others are no good, but they keep the defense dollars flowing to the defense contractors, who in turn keep the dollrs flowing the the corrupt politicians, who in turn keep us in a perpetual state of war, to justify the defense dollars.

[crestorinfo]

As I will be dead under this scenario my opinion is of little importance.

Retaliation in kind would be the worst possible scenario.

Although -- given the nature of man -- retaliaton and utter destruction is most likely what would take place, leading to the end of the world as we know it.

And IIIII feeeeel fiiiiiiine.......

[neeclindy]

The others are no good, but they keep the defense dollars flowing to the defense contractors, who in turn keep the dollrs flowing the the corrupt politicians, who in turn keep us in a perpetual state of war, to justify the defense dollars.

Well, that's just what one of THEM would say!!!!!!

[skupaemauto]

I am worried about this...
But I am still thinking of moving to NYC so...
But that mother fu... (aka Bin Laden) is installing panic all around the globe!!!
Just take a good look at this...
Do you guys remenber that "reunion" that Bush(The USA), Durao Barroso(Portugal), Tony Blair(The UK) and Azar(Spain) had in Lajes(Azores, Portugal)???

Well...

The USA has been attacked...
England has been attacked...
Spain has been attacked...
Portugal hasn´t been attacked YET!

We are the only country on that reunion that hasn´t been attacked yet... So dont worry I will be attacked 1st!



If terrorists nuke NYC, the end of the world might be near!
Thats my opinion!!!

Mix106

PEACE TO YOU ALL!!!

[Buincchotourbss]

Mix, you may want to try pottery or something.

You worry too much. Once you are afraid to live your life the way you want to, they have accomplished what they set out to do. Control you and your way of life by fear of them and their actions.

[Frierlovene]

Ninjahedge, I guess you are right!!!

But they are not limited to threat human kind they actually bomb places around the world!

But they won´t stop me to move to NYC!!!

Mix106

[Nurba]

If terrorists nuke NYC, the end of the world might be near

I second Ninjahedge's advice about pottery. First, it's unlikely that terrorists posess proper nuclear device, second - NYC does not constitute the whole world, third - even if the whole Western civilization vanishes, it's still not the end of the world.

[milfovoxapl]

Will our capacity for destruction snuff liberty?
James P. Pinkerton


January 3, 2006

As we look to 2006, it's hard to be optimistic about the future of freedom. But over the course of the 21st century, there's reason for hope - if we think boldly enough.

In the short term, the threat to liberty is obvious enough: People overseas want to kill us, and so the government must protect us - although sometimes governments misuse their might, focusing on internal dissidents, forgetting about external enemies.

But the continuing advance of technology has brought a new dilemma: Increasingly, any single individual or small group can wield great destructive power. If one were to draw a line over the course of history, from the first tomahawk, through the invention of gunpowder, all the way to the A-bomb, one would see a steeply upsloping curve.

Searching for ways of better expressing this phenomenon, one is reminded of "PyrE," the universe-destroying substance described by Alfred Bester in his 1956 sci-fi classic, "The Stars My Destination." So we have the "PyrE Curve," which rises up from the first killing device in prehistory to the last killing device at the end of history.

Thanks to computers, that upslope is likely to stay steep for a long time to come, as artificial brain power doubles and redoubles. Techno-progress will be spread out across the full spectrum of human activity, but if history is any guide, then much "progress" will come in the form of more lethal weapons, including nano-weapons. Thus, the "suitcase nuke" that we fear today could be superseded by future mass-killers that fit inside a thimble - or a single strand of DNA.

If we reach this techno-threshold, all past assumptions about human freedom will have to be reassessed in light of the dark danger posed by perverted science. If today's sniper and amateur bomb-maker becomes tomorrow's weapon-of-mass-destruction-fabricator, then tomorrow's assumptions about civil liberties will change. The police might be slow to scrutinize every computer and every chemistry set, but if the secrets of city-destroying are to be found inside each home tech-kit, then the cops will eventually come knocking - or no-knocking.

We can sum up the situation this way: the PyrE Curve keeps rising, and yet the physical size of the Earth remains static. More destruction relative to the same creation: Something has to give.

And what will "give," almost certainly, is freedom. After a sufficient number of tragedies and catastrophes, the survival instinct will assert itself, and the source of the problem will be eliminated, or we will die trying. There's plenty of precedent for such coercive danger-pre-emption: the banning of machine guns, for example, and "cop killer" bullets. Similarly, when home computers have 100 times the power of today's supercomputers - well, then, such futurecomputers won't be allowed in the home.

Thus, the human prospect here on Earth: an all-knowing and all-powerful government. Not much room for dissent there.

So is that the end of the story? Human freedom snuffed out by the human capacity for evil and destruction? That's the bleak future here on Earth but not necessarily in the heavens, as distinct from heaven. Some will argue that true liberation is found only in the metaphysical hereafter, but those who seek to guarantee their liberty in corporeal terms will have to make their escape to other heavenly - make that celestial - bodies.

That's the plotline of Robert Heinlein's 1966 novel, "The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress." In that far-seeing libertarian-utopian volume, humankind finds its political freedom in space, far from the surly bondage of Earth.

But aren't we a million miles, politically as well as technologically, from space emigration? Unfortunately, cursed by shallow, short-term thinking, we are nowhere close to fulfilling our potential destiny: living freely, spread out across the universe.

Which is why the near term looks so bleak. Between the rising PyrE Curve and the rising power of the state, the hope for life and liberty here on Earth is sinking below the horizon.

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.

[nerohedfrs]

What this PyrE idiot fails to realize is that the more we research science the more we find out we really know NOTHING!

I am SO tired of these politicians, journalists and writers going on and on about the end of the world because of this rapid development of science while they also ignore some of the things that have made us LIVE for so long.

WMD's are not new technologies, as the smallpox blankets of the colonist days show us, but I do not believe that we have not progressed since then.

We DO stand to have the world end in the blink of an eye, but seeing how we have had that power since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that the power of the computer has multiplied over a thousandfold, and that we are STILL here, I doubt the veracity of crying "the sky is falling" at every new advancement in science.


That does not mean you ignore the gun that is pointed at your head, or the man that is selling them, or the plant that makes them, but looking at a kid that draws a ray-gun as a sign of an apocolyptic future is morbid and defeatist.

[wmtravelservice]

We're born to die. It's gonna happen one day so why worry about it?

[Erwtbimp]

unbelieveable!

[DEMassteers]

This article is from the sci-fi genre. Currently, the largest body count comes from using automobiles and overeating (which in turn could be related to the overuse of automobile)

[pavelChe]

This article is from the sci-fi genre. Currently, the largest body count comes from using automobiles and overeating (which in turn could be related to the overuse of automobile)

Wasn't that where the term:

"Weapons of Mass Consumption"

came from?

[soprofaxelbis]

Idiot repellent.

[texbrease]

And I thought living in suburban Jersey would be safe!

[Blolover11]

What New York City Got for Nearly $1 Million:
19 Doors That Were Never Opened


Andrew Councill for The New York Times
Security doors New York donated to the State Department, in a Virginia warehouse.
nytimes.com
By RUSS BUETTNER
December 30, 2006
They can detect everything from an ice pick to a small bomb, politely suggest that the owner depart and, should he refuse, confine him inside a sarcophagus of metal and bulletproof glass.
But 19 technologically advanced security doors that the city bought for nearly $1 million have spent the last five years gathering dust instead of daggers inside a Rikers Island warehouse.
They will soon be headed for top secret destinations abroad, in countries that are American allies in the war on terror, having been given away this month after three failed attempts to auction them off. But fully appreciating why the city decided to cut ties with the pricey doors requires first understanding the curious decisions, public recriminations and criminal charges that have marked their years in city custody.
In the middle of that tale is Bernard B. Kerik, the city’s former police and correction commissioner and onetime nominee to head the nation’s Department of Homeland Security, though there is no evidence he did anything illegal in connection with the doors.
The Correction Department first began buying the high-tech portals in 2000 from Georal International Ltd., a Queens company, to prevent visitors from bringing weapons and contraband into city jails. Mr. Kerik was correction commissioner at the time. In June 2000, he told The New York Post, “These security doors are the most recent initiative in our ongoing program to improve safety and further reduce inmate violence in the jail system.”
In 2001, after Mr. Kerik moved on to the Police Department, the Correction Department bought 20 more doors without realizing, a spokesman later said, that a dwindling inmate population throughout the late 1990s had resulted in a dwindling number of visitors. Fifteen of the doors were never put into service.
That same year, Mr. Kerik’s team at the Police Department bought four more doors to stop anyone who might try to smuggle a weapon into Police Headquarters. But again, police officials later said, something was overlooked before the check was written: The large doors, they contend, were too heavy for the floor at 1 Police Plaza.
And so 19 of the fire engine red doors, at a cost of $50,300 each, were mothballed on Rikers Island.
Mr. Kerik left public office at the end of 2001 enjoying national attention from his conduct after the Sept. 11 attack and his best-selling memoir, “The Lost Son.” In May 2003 President Bush dispatched him to Iraq to help form a new national police force. Mr. Kerik returned four months later.
Soon after, Mr. Kerik joined an advisory board of DataWorld Solutions Inc., a Long Island-based company that sold electronic cables and security products and was renamed Defense Technologies Systems Inc. before going dormant in 2005. Mr. Kerik was to be granted stock options and receive a commission on sales he generated, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The year after Mr. Kerik joined the advisory board, DataWorld announced it had obtained rights to distribute Georal doors. Mr. Kerik has previously said he had nothing to do with the arrangement. His lawyer, Joseph Tacopina, said yesterday, “There was a thorough investigation into the circumstances surrounding the purchase of these doors, and there was never any allegation of wrongdoing brought against Mr. Kerik. Furthermore, he didn’t have anything to do with authorizing the purchase of any of the doors.”
During the summer of 2004, The Chief Leader, a weekly newspaper in the city that covers municipal labor issues, first revealed that the city had bought doors it did not need and could not use, at prices that seemed too high. The paper reported that John Picciano, Mr. Kerik’s chief of staff at both departments and by then a colleague at Rudolph W. Giuliani’s consulting firm, had authorized the purchase of the first 10 doors at the Correction Department.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly launched an internal investigation into what his spokesman called the Kerik administration’s “warp speed” purchase of the doors.
In response, Mr. Picciano suggested that Mr. Kelly could have used the doors to prevent the fatal shooting of a councilman at City Hall, Newsday reported.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg weighed in, characterizing Mr. Picciano’s comment as “drivel,” according to Newsday.
The quarrel did not dim Mr. Kerik’s star. He appeared that summer in campaign events with President Bush. And in late 2004, Mr. Kerik became, briefly, the president’s nominee to Homeland Security, but he withdrew his nomination as questions arose about his background in a number of news reports.
Several agencies began investigating Mr. Kerik’s relationship with Interstate Industrial, a New Jersey construction company that investigators said was connected to organized crime, a charge the company has always denied. He pleaded guilty last summer to two misdemeanors, including accepting $165,000 in renovation work at his former Bronx apartment from “the Interstate companies or a subsidiary.”
Meanwhile, the city tried to auction off the doors. One auction brought a high bid of $21,600 for all 19. But that bidder backed out, as did the winner of another auction. A third auction again failed to generate a final sale. But it did produce two arrests.
The winner, the Integrated Security Corporation, bid $35,000 for all 19 doors. But authorities say that bid was secretly backed by Alan J. Risi, the owner of Georal, which charged the city about $950,000 when it made them.
Both Integrated and Georal submitted bids from the same Queens address and asserted that the companies were not connected, according to the city’s Department of Investigation. Mr. Risi and Joanne Ruscillo, under whose name the Integrated bid was filed, were charged in October with offering a false instrument for filing, a felony. The two are awaiting trial.
City investigators alleged that Mr. Risi and Ms. Ruscillo went to great lengths to hide Mr. Risi’s involvement, including having her cash checks from him to buy money orders she submitted as a deposit with the bid. But Mr. Risi’s lawyer, John J. Budnick, denied that any fraud had taken place, saying Georal had gone out of business after submitting its bid and that “Integrated is basically now running the show.”
In an interview, Mr. Risi accused the city of conducting “a sad witch hunt,” saying the doors have an encrypted computer system that allows only him to service them. He suggested that the accusations against him were a result of a mistaken perception that a special relationship among himself and Mr. Kerik and Mr. Picciano led to the purchases, which he called “stupid.”
He added that the doors have been installed at government and corporate buildings around the world without their weight ever being an issue.
Through a lawyer, Ms. Ruscillo declined to comment.
After the failed auctions, the Department of Investigation asked other law enforcement agencies whether they might have a need for 19 free security doors.
The State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security accepted the offer for its Antiterrorism Assistance program, which helps civilian and government security forces in friendly nations combat terrorism. The doors were recently trucked to a warehouse in Virginia, where they are being prepared for shipment to locations abroad, said Brian Leventhal, a State Department spokesman. Due to the nature of the war on terror, he said, he could not reveal their final destinations.
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

[intmarkworkk]

Due to the nature of the war on terror, he said, he could not reveal their final destinations. The New York Times has left us with a cliff hanger.