This is the way it is when grown-ups are in charge. Nice, eh?
Thank Whatever that at least *some* nations have managed to mature.
Umm.
I wouldn't call it "public security", Hubris Sonic. I'd call it the accumulated momentum of 60 years of the replacement of rational risk assessment by racial, political, and media-driven moral panics.
Our lovely post-9/11 police state didn't just pop up from out of nowhere like a Jack-in-the-Box. We've been building up to this since before World War II.
We had our lovely little pogrom against the Nisei just prior to, and during the initial phases of World War II.
Then we had the anti-Communist witchhunts of the early 1950s.
Then we had the War On (some) Drugs, which still goes from failure to failure, never, ever re-examined.
Then we had the Satanic Abuse witchhunts, which climaxed hereabouts with the Wenatchee Child Sex Abuse trials.
I should point out that in none of these cases were the people responsible for destroying so many innocents ever made to pay for their crimes. Destruction by denunciation is one of the safest forms of crime.
What we are now seeing is the result of cause and effect. We never had the collective courage to go after the root causes. Now the consequences of this dereliction are upon us.
Oops, forgot to sign that last comment.
No sweat Stormy - would have figured it was you.
and Europe had some pretty active terrorist groups, all through the 70's and 80's. Looks like they things in a more rational way than the children currently living in DC.
Like I said, ceabaird - rational risk assessment. Those active terrorist groups amounted to a boil on the butt. Painful, but not life-threatening.
The grandparents (and many of the parents) of the Europeans living through those times had themselves lived through a convulsion that stamped on cities like the Old Testament wrath of God and killed people by the tens of millions.
They knew the difference between a boil on the butt and metastatic cancer. If we ever knew this, we've long forgotten by now.
"and Europe had some pretty active terrorist groups, all through the 70's and 80's. Looks like they things in a more rational way than the children currently living in DC."
ceabaird
-Also, I believe that the US never took terrorist groups seriously.
Maybe the US thought the oceans would protect us, maybe the US thought our superiority (technological, economic, and overall arrogance) would protect us.
"They can't touch us."
The US didn't see terrorist groups, terrorism as a threat.
Orrin Hatch thought terrorism was a "phony issue" in 1998.
Then along comes 9/11.
Why, those damn furriners have struck us; they used "our" technology against us, and they weren't afraid to do it!
What did the US do to counter this threat?
They lost their fucking minds.
And better don't get started with the US' feelings, ranging from bemusement to outright help, for "people's liberation fronts" around Europe (*cough* IRA *cough*, *cough* ETA *cough*).
As long as they weren't openly commie, they all seemed to get a wink and a nod.
Aaah, yes...more "proof" of Europe's decline--all those homeless working poor with no health insurance...oh, wait...
I forgot WHICH amazingly good book it was that I read last year, but it basically said that the US's imaginary GNP "gains" over Europe's 3% or so are illusory when you take into account little things like national debt and the fact that our unemployment rates APPEAR lower because here, once your unemployment bennies run out after 18 months, you are no longer COUNTED.
I spent the dotcom years watching so many people fall off the map of the counted when their last unemployement check was cashed....
In Europe they actually have jackboot wearers with machine guns. US airport security types look like it came down to either the TSA or the Post Office.
Shitty work for shitty pay begets shitty attitudes.
I don't think it has much to do with terrorists.
It's there to ensure maximum revenues.
Like keeping your mouth shut when they ground stop you and 200 other poor fuckers for two hours in a bus with wings.
Same deal with the passport requirements for Canada, Mexico etc. They're just shaking down the traveling public at $100 per customer.
So, what's the IT job market like for someone with EU citizenship? I expect to have Irish citizenship within two years.
I sure wish it was 1.43 Euros to the Dollar, but you have it backwards. 1 Euro (and why doesn't my keyboard have a Euro sign?) is now worth $1.43. When the Euro was introduced, it was worth $0.88, but spending a few trillion in Iraq has cut the value of the dollar almost in half.
€, perhaps?
ALT+0128, if you're pushing Windows.
Not quite, Admiral. The Clinton Administration, at least toward the end, DID see terrorism as the primary threat to US national security. A Gore Administration probably would have kept that focus.
The 9/11 attacks were not a USAmerican failure, but rather a BUSHEVIK failure. [If indeed it was honest failure, rather than allowing the attacks to happen in order to provide an excuse to seize oilfields]
Further proof of just how bad poor old Europe is doing....yeah, everyone knows that entry-level office clerks in Witchita are going on two-week shopping-spree vacations to Europe this time of year all the time! Yeah!
Of course, the fact that the dollar is in the toilet means that those who probably need to be FORCIBLY sent to Europe for some cultural eye-opening now have one more excuse NOT to.
What I wouldn't do to be in Berlin right now, freezing my butt off but not realizing it because I'm drunk on gluhwein and walking out to an evening of gallery-hopping....sigh...
When I went to Munich in October '06, the euro equaled $1.24. I had a grand time, although when cornered about my nationality I had to apologize and say "I'm American." Everyone understood, and offered their sympathies.
Very mature of them.
Thanks, Jen.
America, the new Thailand for shoppers from Europe. When do we start supplying tourists with underage hookers and transsexuals?
Or has that already started?
Ceabaird,
You obviously haven't been to some of the seedier parts of LIC or the Far West Side...the former is frequently the site of raids on brothels with REALLY underage girls and the West Side is still Trans Central...
Whenever I see you or other Americans enthusing about Europe I'm forced to reflect that on this offshore bit of Europe we're stuck with a Prime Minister who believes passionately in the American way of doing things having succeeded one who was Bush's utterly loyal ally--and that he's opposed by a Tory party that loathes the E.U. and has a fair sprinkling of outright Neocons in key positions standing ready to take us on any lunatic adventures that Washington might devise.
Then I don't know whether to weep or scream.
PSG--I hear ya.
It could be worse. You could be stuck in the Way Back Machine to 88-89, the year I spent in London and watched the Bushites take power for the first time, with a cheering Maggie Thatcher on the telly nonstop.
...we are only a couple hundred miles from where Mohammed Atta didn't meet the Iraqis in Prague.
Hee hee. Hubris, you're such a bitch. 
Yep, you're right Jen... country boy here. But it's not like I haven't seen stuff like that in the states, or don't think it doesn't exist... I just haven't seen the German tourists heading for the shores of the US like they do for Thailand... and the Dutch for Indonesia... et al, ad nauseum.
At least, not yet.
Ivory Bill Woodpecker:
I stand corrected (I don't wanna go to the Phantom Zone!)
"While traveling and experiencing the decline of Europe, I am noticing the Euro is deflating all the way up to $1.43 to the Euro."
You mean US dollar, right?
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