Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Marshals To Patrol Land, Sea Transport. Teams of undercover air marshals and uniformed law enforcement officers will fan out to bus and train stations, ferries, and mass transit facilities across the country this week in a new test program to conduct surveillance and "counter potential criminal terrorist activity in all modes of transportation," according to internal federal documents. According to internal Transportation Security Administration documents, the program calls for newly created "Visible Intermodal Protection and Response" teams -- called "Viper" teams -- to take positions in public areas along Amtrak's Northeast Corridor and Los Angeles rail lines; ferries in Washington state; and mass transit systems in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Baltimore. Viper teams will also patrol the Washington Metro system. [Washington Post] So as a reward for murdering an innocent man, the Terrorist Safety Administration is being given the opportunity to terrorize and kill people outside of airports. At this rate I won't be able to travel at all. The expansion of this particular Gestapo agency into city streets was one of the few aspects of government oppression in the novel The Black Arrow that wasn't based on a real-world atrocity. Now it seems that will no longer be true. comment () trackback ()  9:55:57 PM     New at Reason. James Bovard wants to know why America's editorial boards are so enthusiastic about air marshals gunning down unarmed passengers.... [Hit and Run] In the old days, Americans were taught that the media would serve as a check and a balance on government powers. That platitude is fading as news professionals show less regard for private citizens than for government officials who can provide exclusive access and hot tips. Perhaps if Alpizar had regularly attended Georgetown dinner parties, the media would show more curiosity about his fate. That pretty much explains it. comment () trackback ()  9:31:40 PM     Vermont secession. EXCELLENT ARTICLE ON VERMONT SECESSION. And it speaks volumes that this "left-wing" movement is being praised in a "conservative" publication. The lines are shattering, as they must. [Wolfesblog] It's a very good article. Unfortunately, it seems like the secessionists aren't taking the inevitable brutal reconquest by the Evil Empire as seriously as they should. comment () trackback ()  11:10:26 AM     When enforcers crash in. KIM DU TOIT HAS SENSIBLE WORDS on the senseless practice of kicking down doors without extreme justification. But I'd like to take that one step further. He writes: [Wolfesblog] SWAT tactics were developed to be used in truly extraordinary circumstances: hostage takings, barricaded (violent) suspects, terrorist incidents. SWAT teams are still sold to the duped and tax-paying public on that basis. But it's BS. When police soldiers conduct approximately 40,000 paramilitary raids against U.S. citizens each year and 80 percent of those are to serve routine drug-war search warrants, we're not only being duped. We're being ruled by stormtroopers. I could herald SWAT officers who used extraordinary skills and training against extraordinary villains, thus ending immediately life-threatening crimes and saving lives. But those who get shot crashing into homes in the middle of the night on flimsy to non-existent justification are violent criminals and the world is better off without them. comment () trackback ()  10:59:38 AM     Chimpanzees Beat out Children in Reasoning Test. caffeinemessiah writes "The New York Times has a story on how chimpanzees seem to exhibit a better understanding of cause and effect than human children. While training chimps to perform a routine task with redundant steps, the chimps were able to figure out and eliminate the redundant steps, while the human children routinely performed them despite their evident uselessness. It says something about the way we learn compared to chimps and should be interesting to cognitive scientists and those interested in computational learning theory, at the least." [Slashdot] The Times article requires registration, so I can't read any details on the children in this experiment, but I'd be willing to bet that they were inmates from a public school. comment () trackback ()  8:58:58 AM

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