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Terrorism 2010


Thomas.

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As we have recently heard on the news, terrorism seems to be making a comeback in many lives - not the ever so minor car bombs and shootings but the larger ones involving aeroplanes. Today the British government raised the terrorism attack threat level to "Severe", one step below critical as this follows the planned and failed attack on Detroit on Christmas 2009.

Recent terrorist attacks, attacks that have happened in the past few years in the UK were the Glasgow Airport bombing in which nobody innocent died and the London attacks. Obviously it's not just the UK being effected but these were some of the worse.

The United Kingdom will be introducing full body scanners at many major airports next week. I don't really like the idea of this, our privacy is being intruded by the government whenever we want to leave the country or travel domestically within the country.

Do you think there will be a major terrorist attack this year? Or will it be another way for the press and governments to scare us?

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I don't really like the idea of this, our privacy is being intruded by the government whenever we want to leave the country or travel domestically within the country.

I don't mind anyone seeing my cock and the half pound of cocaine i try to smuggle up my arse if it means a significant increase to national security.

ever so minor car bombs

Also lol, killing many people a week. Minor.

To the question in hand. i don't think it should be a matter of predicting or conspiring about when / where / if terrorists will attack. If we do, the terrorists have clearly inspired fear in us, which is what they want. This can cloud our judgement, and when the public are in fear it can cause the government to overcompensate with their actions. Hopefully, of course, by the end of the year we should be able to further withdraw from afghanistan, reduce our presence there and leave the afghan police to keep the situation somewhat neutral. In withdrawing from Afghanistan, al quieda might reduce their threat to the western world.

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A couple of hours ago the UK threat level was raised from 'substantial' to 'severe' in response to the failed attack in Detroit at Christmas. That means they expect an attack, but have no intel to say there's an immediate threat.

Not sure how useful that is. It probably conveys some extra powers to security services to search people/places, and gives them a way to say "told you so" if anything happened.

I don't see the issue with full-body scanners at airports. The screens are watched by people who can't see you, and the images aren't stored. The problem is deciding how much detail they can reveal without intruding on some weird notion of privacy.

Bear in mind these shouts of privacy are coming from people with public twitter accounts, forum accounts with their dates of birth, facebook showing their school.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have no problem with these full body scanners. I do worry though how far our governments are willing to go in the name of combating terrorism. I fear that they could one day surrender all our freedoms and implement some blatent authoritarian or fascist techniques, and the unthinking majority will just roll over and accept it, because they think it will make them safer. Hopefully it wont come to that. :unsure:

Tbh i think terrorism (particularly this Islamic breed) is an overblown problem, its nothing compared to the threat the IRA and UDA posed to Britain a few decades back. Being killed or injured in a terrorist attack is the least of my worries when i leave my home, im more like to be killed in a mugging, or simply by crossing a busy road.

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'Islamic Terrorism' is more of a threat to the United States. I'm not old enough to remember IRA but my parents tell me stories about their experiences with them - for example, they were driving into Hartlepool or another Yorkshire town beginning with 'H' with a car with an Irish registration, by chance Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was also in Hartlepool. They got stopped by the police just to be checked.

The London bombings only happened in 2005 because the Metropolitan Police were down numbered due to the G8 summit that was happening in Gleneagles, Scotland. Then in 2007, Glasgow Airport was bombed. I remember watching both on the news. I was appalled, more so than what happened on 9/11 because terrorism was happening here not there.

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