As IF Times

link Expert: Security Checkpoints Near Soft Targets May Soon Become The Norm « CBS New York.

So for almost 10 years, the West has had to be extra vigilant for any signs of ongoing terror activity in their daily lives.  All kinds of cumbersome and debatable programs and techniques were implemented at airports and other public transportation hubs by government ‘experts’ purportedly to keep everyone safe.  All of this was necessary since the mastermind of the 9-11 terror attacks was still at large and could be plotting mayhem anywhere and at any minute.  People were told to go about living their normal lives in defiance of the terrorists, but just in case, keep looking over their shoulders and suspect everyone.  Even 6 year old girls and frail grandmothers could not be ruled out as pawns in the diabolical methods of the terrorists.  A whole new workforce of government employees was created to molest, harass and humiliate us…..in order to ensure our safety.

Well, now the 9-11 mastermind has apparently been killed. Yet somehow, the experts exhort us to be even more vigilant and sensitive to possible retaliatory attacks by Bin Laden’s fans.  !!!  So, were we better off with him at large plotting the west’s destruction when he was alive, or now with his lackeys pursuing revenge after his death?   As of now, it seems like a lose/lose scenario. 

This sounds vaguely familiar…oh I know where I’ve heard this before!  Global warming!  People may recall the earnest bleats that a decade of supposedly increasing average temperatures, over the earth’s life of over 10 million years, was convincing evidence of global warming.  Over the past year or more however, the climate has never been cooler with snowfall and cold temperatures setting low records all over the place.  The Global Warming crew see this as EVIDENCE of global warming, or as they now call it, climate change.  So now we have to redouble our efforts to fight this man caused disaster.

In the case of the terror alerts, how about we recognize that the West will always be targets for our way of life and for our conspicuous affluence.  Unless there is technology to inspect every stick of gum, every lining of every jacket and every stitch of bulky underwear and the contents of every single car on the planet, we will be subject to the efforts of the people that hate the west.   Pretending to live normal lives while inside a plastic bubble is institutionalized lunacy.  Unlike Western culture which attempts to be inclusive and tolerant of variant peoples, Middle Eastern culture is still largely stuck in the mindset of edicts created thousands of years ago with no revision.  In a famous poem, The Ballad of East and West,  Rudyard Kipling concluded as much. 

Classic wisdom it seems.  As time goes on, people may want to cast some skeptical eyes upon the on-going ‘security’ regimes imposed upon them.  Like the global warming scam, someone benefits and it’s not the public.  It’s easy to project the hysteria that will be fanned by a concerned government so that all kinds of security measures will be imposed upon the helpless people.  We’ll have people who are armed and “protecting’ us and the rest who are dependant on their presence.  Years ago,  Ronald Reagan stated that the most dangerous words ever uttered were, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help”.  If TSA practices are what we can expect as government continues to “help” us,  I think we’d be better off looking after ourselves.

link News from The Associated Press.

This is what happens when we are consistently fed stories which are distorted, exaggerated or outright faked.  The more people get used to hearing stories of unmasked lies,  the less they believe anything at all.  The big consequence of distortions fed to the public is rampant cynicism.

Even in this particular case, the details of what happened when the U.S. Navy Seals dispatched Osama to his 72 virgins are already muddy. It’s debatable whether there will ever be an accurate version of what went down.   Discount the fact that it was a military operation, so  of course some details will be blurred out.  Even if presented with the same set of visual evidence, people will come to different convictions as to what transpired.  It doesn’t help that there are already variant official versions.  He was armed.  Then he wasn’t.  He was using women as a shield.  Then they were in the next room.  It’s not that these tidbits are germane to the result, but the question is, why have any variant versions at all? 

Apparently, they will issue official photos of our hero, post meeting with the Seals, in the hopes of confirming his demise.  Good enough for me.  The Seals aren’t in the bs business.  But with the sophistication of photo manipulation these days, who knows?  It could just be a mildly doctored pic of Charlie Sheen after a bender. There will always be doubters and conspiracy theorists conjuring up possible scenarios.   Is it just natural for people to be skeptical?  Or is it conditioning from the constant stream of propaganda and skew that comes from politicians and the media?   Maybe the former, but over the years, it has become more and more evident that opinions are framed by the media as much as by the facts themselves.  Is it just to sell newspapers? Or  are there darker agendas?

The greatest irony of our times is that despite the  sheer amount of information that’s available and accessible to all, it’s maddeningly difficult to determine what is fact and what is flotsam.  Who knows, in the next while, we could get a release of tape coming from someone who purports to be Bin Laden, claiming that the guy shot was actually a twin brother as if in some preposterous John Woo movie. 

For now, I’ll believe the Seals.