> Wild to see the Seattle Chamber acting like he is making things better in Downtown when 2 blocks down the hill from City Hall 7-Eleven closed up shop due to all the tweakers.
This apparent contradiction is easy to explain.
Forcing people into rehab is considered inhumane. Tweakers are deemed to be victims of society, and therefore the 'correct' solution is to have more tolerance for tweakers. More tweakers out on the street is evidence that the tweakers feel tolerated, which must mean that it's working.
This won't change until you vote out the local politicians who believe these premises: that forcing people into rehab is inhumane. That tweakers are victims of society's intolerance, and that tweakers wouldn't be a problem if we had more tolerance for them.
You have me laughing my ass off right now. I know one person who is in involuntary detox currently (then onto court ordered rehab). The King County Municipal Court is dishing these out left and right, but that still doesn't prevent relapse 6 months after getting out of rehab.
Then we get all the suburbs dumping their druggies in Pioneer Square and Chinatown. It's a neverending pipeline of addicts the Eastside and south end is dumping on us.
We need to start tracking all non-city LEOs entering Seattle and turn them around if they are giving courtesy rides. Called 911 on one from Bothell yesterday and started filming the occupant and cop. They raced off right quick but I still filed a complaint with Bothell PD.
The east side simply enforces it laws. Ya, they don’t go anywhere in the King County Justice system, but the harassment of getting arrested in Bellevue for doing drugs in public is enough to push them into Seattle where that would simply never occur.
The Eastside dumps it's problems elsewhere, the current homeless situation and lack of facilities east of Seattle is but one example.
Everett has made a huge effort with their rehabilitation and detox programs, but they have the same shitty situation of being the dumping ground for Snohomish County.
There are facilities in Bellevue (east gate) and they do contribute money to the regional shelter fund. But generally the really bad cases will go wherever they are best tolerated (like camping, smoking fentanyl on the bus, shoplifting whatever from Fred Meyer while the cops just watch). So Everett, Seattle, and much of south king county, Tacoma, etc..
They are nowhere near immobile, while metro and sound transit doesn’t even try to collect fares anymore. Bellevue doesn’t need to transport anyone to Seattle, they just send out 5 officers 5 minutes after someone lays down on a park bench. Surely Mill Creek does the same forcing people to Everett. (Lynwood probably has a problem just as bad as Everett)
> The King County Municipal Court is dishing these out left and right,
Hardly, the number of tweakers they throw into rehab is nothing compared to the number of tweakers on the streets. A small percent of tweakers being thrown into rehab isn't going to solve the problem if most of them aren't thrown into rehab.
> suburbs dumping
Local politicians always love to blame others. It's never their fault, of course, and the blame casting always comes with fantasy solutions that will never be implemented, like your idea to "track all non-city LEOs". And each year the problem gets worse. The city is filled with people who think as you do, elect ineffectual politicians who think as you do, and so the city gets what it deserves.
(As someone, unfortunately, living in Seattle) Why wouldn't they, really? I mean, there's a reason the problem is not symmetrical - Seattle PD could do the same with Bothell to balance it out and make it a MAD type of thing, but they don't - why not?
I think willfully stupid people should suffer the consequences of their willful stupidity. It's a bummer I cannot move away from them right now, but I do see how this is totally fair to the stupid people.
Metro or Sound Transit mostly. The east side makes itself inhospitable to porch pirating and public drug use/selling, so the problems wind up in Seattle where the police do much less in those areas.
I’m a fan of the way the east side does things, none of their voters will fault the police for being too strict on enforcement of quality of life issues. But Seattle voters are different, so this is what we get. It’s neither’s fault, people will just go where they can live life the easiest, do you blame them?
Which it's worth noting also requires incentives in your life to actually improve it. Kicking someone out of rehab when they're cured with no job prospects, no support network and no home has rather predictable results.
> Tweakers are deemed to be victims of society, and therefore the 'correct' solution is to have more tolerance for tweakers.
You should strongly consider that these suppositions are fundamentally wrong. I suggest you read Sanfransicko, written by a longtime progressive democrat activist who had the vanishingly rare intellectual honesty to examine in hindsight the results of the drug and homeless policies he himself fought for. He found that they were disastrous!
> Forcing people into rehab is considered inhumane.
How is it otherwise? Or do we just forget other people's freedom when they do things you don't like?
> Tweakers are deemed to be victims of society, and therefore the 'correct' solution is to have more tolerance for tweakers. More tweakers out on the street is evidence that the tweakers feel tolerated, which must mean that it's working.
Instead of strawpeople and rants, how about trying to find solutions that help everyone?
So what? Do we do nothing at all in life, because it cannot be done perfectly? And I'm not sure you are correct; we probably could help at least the vast majority. Why aren't we? Why stand around debating it. Let's act!
> it’s unfair to expect those living normal lives to suffer because drug addicts exist.
It's life, it's the world you are born into - none other ever has existed. Let's raise ourselves up, and especially abandon the absurd trend - is there a more vicious and dangerous one? - of lacking empathy. I understand disruption; it's a tool; what are we trying to accomplish by eliminating empathy?
You and I need empathy too; we give it, in great volume, and maybe in life we get a little back. We live in the real world, not on an island, and this is very much part of the world. We're expected to do these things - it's necessary, basic life and responsibility, along with being humane and responsible. You weren't born into a pain-free, suffering-free world. Civilization, society, your community runs on these efforts, whether you realize it or not - if not, you are sitting back while others do the hard work. And you cause your share too (including trying to take away others' freedom and dignity) and so do I. These are vulnerable people; they need help and support; they might not be nice, and God knows who is deserving. I'm not throwing any stones.
In the context of this blog post, which explosive parts should we mothball and which ones are too dangerous to store intact, it’s unwise to store pre-boosted plutonium cores at all.
But, as a thought experiment, what is the difference between a pile of boosted-era plutonium cores; and a weird but moderated reactor? Specifically, does an arbitrarily-sized pile of weapons-grade plutonium marbles have the same inevitability of criticality you expect than if those are designed for use in boosted triggers?
Pu-239 is an alpha emitter, but that's not the end of the story. All plutonium weapon cores are also neutron emitters because all weapons grade plutonium is impure and contains 2-7% Pu-240. Pu-240 is very prone to undergoing spontaneous fission which emits neutrons. So the presence of neutron radiation around a plutonium weapon core is unavoidable.
Furthermore, when Pu-239 is struck by neutrons (from the Pu-240 contaminant, for instance), it has a chance of undergoing fission and that results in the release of more neutrons which can cause additional Pu-239 to undergo fission. This chain reaction is how Pu-239 bombs work. A properly stored core will not sustain this chain reaction because the core is in a sub-critical configuration.
So there is in fact a very serious critical mass concern with plutonium bomb cores.
Yes, alpha particles aren't relevant to the fission reaction, so the fact that it's easy to shield against alpha emission isn't relevant. It's all about the neutrons.
What's the real difference between the government stationing armed soldiers in your town to maintain the peace, and stationing armed police in your town to maintain the peace? The former became unfashionable so it was replaced with the later. Such soldiers were renamed for "PR" but the situation is functionally equivalent. Officially there are some differences, like police being accountable to civilian courts instead of military courts... but I think it is now generally acknowledged that civilian courts have a double standard for police. So this distinction is more theoretical than practical.
In my view, it's fair to consider anybody who carries a gun for the state as a soldier, in an informal sense.
The difference in US law falls under the Posse Comitatus Act[1] (which has been repeatedly expanded over the last 150 years): the government, by law, cannot use military forces for domestic law enforcement.
I'm no particular fan of the US military (much less the police), but the practical and historical distinctions between the two are substantial: one is the professional military of a country, and the other is a professionalization of antebellum slave catching posses.
I think the comment you are replying to is making a slightly different point: what's the point of Posse Comitatus when heavily armed, trigger happy, indemnified government employees can do the exact same thing by just wearing blue instead of camo?
That limits what the federal government can do with the US military. Governors have more lattiude with using state-level military (i.e. national guard units) in their own states.
> What's the real difference between the government stationing armed soldiers in your town to maintain the peace, and stationing armed police in your town to maintain the peace?
One's subject to military tribunals[1], while the other is subject to regular courts, which from all evidence seem to be incredibly biased in their favour.
Can't forget rules of engagement. I've seen multiple (as-claimed-on-the-internet) soldiers complain about cop-malfeasance with respect to the situations in which gunfire is allowed to occur. They opine that if cops were trained like they were, shootings would look very different, be much rarer, and be much more defensible to the average joe.
> multiple (as-claimed-on-the-internet) soldiers complain about cop-malfeasance with respect to the situations in which gunfire is allowed to occur.
Soldiers tooting their own horns; this self-aggrandizement is not to be taken seriously. There is evidence that police with military backgrounds are more likely to be involved in shootings. Police who are combat veterans are even more likely to be involved in shootings. Soldier training does not make good police.
>>They opine that if cops were trained like they were
>There is evidence that police with military backgrounds are more likely to be involved in shootings.
Ah, but that's not the claim being made. You've quite adroitly shown proof that former soldiers make shooty LEOs. I'm relating that soldiers suggest that if all cops were trained as soldiers were with respect to not firing their weapons until some situational conditions were met, shootings would fall.
I'd imagine that the sort of soldier who comes home and seeks out the experience of being a cop, immersed in "killology" [0] as they are (a philosophy that suggests firing your weapons), would indeed become the sort of cop to wind up being involved in a shooting.
...and I'm aware that "killology"'s founder and chief proselytizer is a former soldier. Note, however, that he does not advise cops that they must be strictly bound by any RoE before being willing to fire their weapons; he advises quite the opposite.
There is simply no evidence that American military training would produce better police than extant American police. Nothing other than the self-aggrandizing claims of people who claim to be veterans on the internet. Claims that usually go unchallenged, and repeated uncritically (as above), because this country has a culture of soldier worship.
Besides the evidence to the contrary which I have already posted, I think you need to be more skeptical of the claims American soldiers make about their conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. Talk about rules of engagement is cheap, what matters is the actual execution of those rules. American soldiers were made to behave as police in those countries, and in neither case were they good at it.
American police are bad enough already, the last thing they need is even more military training.
You haven't presented evidence to the contrary, you've presented evidence that former soldiers make shooty LEOs. You should re-read the above comment chain, regarding what's being claimed and why, or admit that you're not here to argue a point but grind an axe. Sure, I have no evidence that training cops like soldiers regarding not firing their weapons until some situational conditions were met would reduce shootings, and I'm neither a cop, a soldier, nor an American. That said, there certainly seems to be evidence that training cops to view civilians as enemy combatants, and to be quick to shoot them, encourages cops to shoot people. I mean, it's called "killology" (I just can't get over that). It seems to me that if cops were trained to not fire their weapons until some situational conditions were met, it might discourage cops from shooting people. Maybe I'm being ridiculous!
"RoE, or specific claims about the implementation and efficacy of RoE, is/are bullshit" is a different point, which I'm totally willing to concede. Again, maybe I'm being ridiculous, but I figure reality of American policing is that it'd be easier to hoodwink cops into something approaching military discipline than, like, de-escalation training, actually barring crazies from the profession rather than allowing them to get jobs a few counties over, and handing back the Pentagon-surplus APCs.
> So-called “signature strikes”, targeting people whose behavior is assessed to be similar enough to those of terrorists to mark them for death, will continue, according to senior US officials.
> Human-rights groups have long denounced the practice – whose criteria can be as vague as killing “military-aged males” in regions where terrorists operate – as anonymous killing.
Looks like your article refers to aerial strikes. How on earth did you read "gunfire" and think "Predator drone"?
Not that the American military doesn't indiscriminately kill people, but you're free to look up RoE for ground troops and discussions thereof yourself.
The overwhelming majority of the time, "arrests" on airplanes are made by regular passengers and the flight attendants, who beat up the offender then hogtie him with duct tape. Air marshals are completely pointless.
Air marshals may be pointless, but not for this reason.
Air marshals are almost certainly trained not to intervene in minor disturbances. Otherwise a team of hijackers could locate the air marshal by having one person act as an unruly passenger.
> Otherwise a team of hijackers could locate the air marshal by having one person act as an unruly passenger.
For the last twenty years, hijackers (in flights originating from US) are probably always presumed to be suicidal and much less likely to succeed in a hijacking. To the point where I'd assume that they're rarely even attempted.
Perhaps we could end up needing air marshals in the future, a future where many passengers are not old enough to recall or be affected by the terrorist attacks on September 11.
Conversely, as a hijacker, you'd be taking a huge gamble to try and select the one flight where there were no air marshals.
A lot of times, I feel like this whole concept was based on an inherit deterrent and seems to have worked, in conjunction with increased airport screening:
"The number of hijackings has dwindled in recent years. About 50 have been reported since Sept, 11, 2001, and none in the U.S., according to the Aviation Safety Network."
Reinforced cabin doors and knowing that the terrorists want to kill everyone instead of taking hostages has changed the game. I'm not privy to what influences terrorists but it seems like they can no longer commandeer airplanes
If you're going to be hijacking to use the plane as a weapon you aren't going to be worried about the 1 in 10 chance of an air marshall trying to stop you, any more than the near certain attempt of the other 200 people on the plane trying to stop you. There just aren't legions of people out there willing to kill massive amounts of people in this fashion.
The number of bear attacks in Springfield went to zero in 1996 when Homer started Bear Patrol. It's a case of life imitating art.
Before 9/11 you hijacked a plane, flew to Cuba, got some money, and all was well.
Before 9/11 you were a passenger/crewmember on a plane, you flew to Cuba, then got released, and all was well.
9/11 changed that. No longer were passengers and crew safe as long as they complied, no longer were planes allowed to fly around and even be refuelled safe in the knowledge that all it would take is some money to free them.
As such over the course of two hours the calculus changed. Hijacking the first 3 planes worked because nobody expected it. The fourth plane was also hijacked, but the goal (crashing into whatever building) wasn't met because the passengers and crew found out the rules had changed.
If you hvae 5 people willing to kill themselves for your cause, there are better ways to make a political statement now than the risk of hijacking a plane - not because of any potential air marshall, but because of the guarantee of the passengers.
Air Marshals and the TSA are both pointless jobs programs and security theater. The problem of hijackers was solved in the morning of 2001/9/11 when the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 fought back against the hijackers. Since then, there have been numerous cases of passengers beating the shit out of any jackass trying to start trouble on a flight.
Locked cabin doors are also good. Metal detectors at airports would be fine, if they were staffed by private security contractors rather than the unaccountable TSA. Also their xray backscatter machines are pointless, their paranoia about shoes is pointless, and their insane paranoia about water-bottles is pointless. Other countries don't have these things, and things are fine for them. By all means have people walk through a metal detector to stop carryon handguns, but the rest of this crap is completely pointless.
In my experience, when a flight is international then the checks end up being pretty similar to what you see with the TSA in an American airport. When they are regional then there's nothing happening.
(granted, that was dealing with a UK->US and US->UK flights)
First, regional and international flights always been in the same terminal and therefor the same check for me.
International...depends on a country:
Vietnam spent more time looking at my passport then looking at my luggage (actually didn't look at all, was talking to someone and not looking at the monitor).
Korea - leave everything in a bag, leave your shoes, easy-breezy.
Japan - the same as Korea.
Germany/Spain - was more worried that: I have place to say and plane ticket back and that I will be let into the US on my way back that what was in my bags.
Mexico - again, more time spent on documents than my bags, but I was subject to random search at the gate once...unpleasant.
In fact, even in the US TSA checks aren't the same: some airports let you leave everything in a bag, others will bitch about tiny wireless headphones left in a bag. Anyway, I'd say TSA will have the most ridiculous checks and number of people who have no idea how to go through TSA.
AFAIK, depending on the destination, the airline and other parameters, there will be air marshals. Contrary to the US, these are „normal“ special police, and they won’t do this on a regularly basis.
I recently went from North America -> Africa via Europe. I do have global entry, but i found the CDG experience to be more onerous than the one I have domestically in the US.
I firmly believe that there was not another 9/11-style attack because 9/11 didn't do shit of what the bad guys wanted. Simply, it is not cost-effective. I find it very hard to believe that the security theater of the TSA would have any chance of denying well-financed and trained attackers.
Yeah, it probably works against the stupid kind of kidnappers from the '70s ("I want 1 million dollars in non-marked notes, refuel and want to go to Havana, and while we're at it, I want my girlfriend who is in jail because of drug charges, to be released and brought to this plane"), but at what cost?
That’s the way I see it. Give the people the means and expectation to protect themselves in a dangerous situation and the rest of the problem solves itself.
United Airlines Flight 93 crashed and everyone on board died. That does not seem like a problem solved type of situation to me.
The TSA is far more accountable than private security contractors. In fact I really like the TSA, those security checks became far more civil and professional and pleasant after the TSA came in.
As far as private security contractors -- this is what usually happens when they hire them for airport security. Because airport security is sinecure ... there is no competition or option, it is treated as a way to extract the most money by a well connected businessman. A well connected businessman will get the contract, and then attempt to extract as much value from it by spending the minimum amount possible on salaries. So all the "private security contractors" will be minimum wage jobs.
But the airport is a terrible place to work for a minimum wage worker. Travel to and from the airport is usually difficult and expensive, and parking is very expensive. In fact parking is usually more expensive per hour than the minimum wage. So most minimum wage workers avoid airport jobs.
So who takes these jobs? Minimum wage workers that cannot find any other minimum wage jobs. These end up being mostly ex-cons. So you get the situation that ex-cons provide security for one of the most vulnerable parts of our transportation infrastructure. This was the case pre 9/11 and it is one of the reasons why none of the hijackers had any trouble smuggling knives on their flights.
The hijackers were going to crash the plane and kill everyone on board and anybody at the target crash site. The calculus for using a plane as a missile has changed. Passengers simply won't allow it to happen and there is a locked cockpit door. A similar event isn't impossible but nothing TSA or air marshals do is preventing a hijacking.
A private contractor would not have sovereign immunity, so you can sue them without the government's assent. They would not receive special legal protections, like the signs the TSA put up threatening you with steep fines if you "verbally abuse" the TSA workers (even police in America don't receive such protection against verbal abuse, but apparently TSA workers do.) If they consistently understaff their security checkpoint, as the TSA routinely does during periods of anticipated heavy travel, the airport could fire them and hire another contractor who can do the job properly.
Airport security in America used to be done by private contractors. The TSA didn't exist before 2001. And before 2001, airport security checkpoints generally ran much smoother and faster than the TSA.
Actually airport security in America was much much worse before 9/11. I remember it well. It was mostly done by ex-cons in minimum wage jobs (see my other post in this thread), it was far more understaffed.
The only "positive" thing about security before 9/11 is that those private contractors were paid to let as many people through as possible for the least amount of labor possible so they were not very serious with the security. So thats why some people remember things running "smoother". But it was definitely not safer. Remember, there were 19 9/11 hijackers, and not one of them had any problems bringing a knife on board.
Point me to one case where anyone has successfully sued a private airport screening contractor for damages resulting from terrorism? That does not happen. It would be an interesting economic experiment if airport screening companies were made liable for the acts of people they erroneously let in, and were forced to buy insurance to cover for these liabilities. I would expect airport screenings by private contractors to get much more aggressive than the TSA then. But currently this is not the case.
They didn't bring knives, they brought box cutters, because those private security groups were actually okay at screening things like knives.
Meanwhile, the modern TSA fails something like 90% of their own tests, in terms of letting stuff through. Many people who every-day carry stuff like knives talk about forgetting to remove their pocket knife, and getting it through TSA accidentally.
I don't think an ordinary pocket knife was prohibited pre 9/11 anyway. I used to carry a little "Swiss Army Knife" everywhere and never recall issues at airport security (though I didn't then and still don't fly much).
In the mid-00s I had a Leatherman multitool with a knife. I was constantly forgetting to take it out of my pocket before going to the airport, and never once did the (then-fairly-new TSA) even mention it, let alone do anything about it.
I finally lost it in 2008 or so when a bouncer at a club wouldn't let me in with it (and I had parked quite a ways away and waited in line for too long for me to consider going back to put it in the car). So... nightclub bouncers are more effective at screening weapons than the TSA.
These have 150 confirmed kills [1], and another 239 suspected kills [2]. They also weigh a lot, so a lot of excessive fuel is burnt because of them every day. They also sometimes break, causing delayed and cancelled flights.
The problem on 9/11 wasn't the crashing of the plane, people accept risk in transport -- the deadliest means of transport in the US in 2001 was an automobile -- 10 times deadlier than being a passenger on a plane. The problem was the using the plane as a weapon.
car - 4600 billion pax miles, 42,000 deaths, 1 per 100 million miles
plane - 500 billion pax miles, 246 deaths of airline travellers on 9/11, 265 from Queens, about 1 per 1 billion miles
The only real meta is to treat everybody as an individual. Pay attention to how they react during different stages of the conversation and tailor your own behavior to make them more comfortable. Some people respond well to being asked about themselves. Other people become nervous and evasive. Pay attention to how they respond and react accordingly.
Besides that, there is no "one size fits all" approach. The only approach that works for everybody is to treat everybody like an individual with a unique personality.
Additionally, don't attempt to banter even if the Brit initiates it. Brits think that Americans cannot banter and will assume that any banter from an American is intended as a sincere insult. Don't try to explain that Americans frequently banter among each other and no offense is intended, they won't believe you.
It is better to remain cordial as they 'banter' at you, but to never reciprocate.
I find the most frustrating conversations are with people who can't stop talking and who fail to distinguish what is or isn't important information for other people in the conversation.
> How was your flight?
> Oh it was great, I sat next to a man named Joe Smoe, wait no I think his name was Joe Blow... no he said his name was Jim Blow... wait no his name was Jim Smoe... he said he was bus driver.. or was it a truck driver?...
How do you politely say "I'm never going to meet this man, and you'll never meet him again, so who cares what his name was? Get on with the story!" I know some people who can waffle around like this for 10 minutes easily, trying to remember a detail that nobody else could conceivably care about. By the time they remember the detail everybody else has already forgotten the rest of the story anyway.
The only virtue Tim Cook knows is money. Everything he pretends to believe in the context of America goes completely out the window in the context of China. Why? Because money.
This apparent contradiction is easy to explain.
Forcing people into rehab is considered inhumane. Tweakers are deemed to be victims of society, and therefore the 'correct' solution is to have more tolerance for tweakers. More tweakers out on the street is evidence that the tweakers feel tolerated, which must mean that it's working.
This won't change until you vote out the local politicians who believe these premises: that forcing people into rehab is inhumane. That tweakers are victims of society's intolerance, and that tweakers wouldn't be a problem if we had more tolerance for them.