...okay, it's not absolutely true, but they canoed into Canada from Buffalo and back without incident, despite all the millions we've been spending on border security here. There's a wonderful analogy in here about birds and how they also will deplete their resources (bodily energy) in the name of false security threats. Plus it's pretty darn funny.
--snip--
The lesson is not that we have weak border security. The lesson is not to throw another million dollars at it, so punks like me can't make you worry about Mohamed canoeing into the U.S. with a suitcase nuke.
That won’t make you safer—because I didn't only test the DHS on the northern tip of Lake Erie. I wrote e-mails and text messages about my original plan to “sneak Anthrax into the U.S. by canoe” for months. I talked about it on cell phones and land lines as much as my friends could bear. And I thought the government was spying on us to protect us.
Again, to be thorough, the lesson is not that the government should give another billion in contracts to legally untouchable telecom companies. The lesson, simply, is that these security measures don’t work, because they don’t have to—they’re not designed to. They’re designed make the few rich at the expense of the many, under the pretense of security. That these costly follies can make us feel safer is moot, because the actual terrorist threat doesn’t warrant our hyperbolic insecurity.
Already in this War of Terror, we've sacrificed over a trillion dollars, our civil liberties and thousands of lives. The more we spend, the less safe we become, the more we spend. Post 9/11 America is a national cuckoo’s nest, terrified by a self-fulfilling prophecy that vast networks of evildoers are hell-bent on slipping over the border to kill our children.
--snip--
http://www.buffalobeast.com/129/Lake_Feary.html
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