EmergeSync

I live in the DFW area where the big new yesterday (9/24/09) was that the FBI stopped a man attempting to blow up one of the skyscrapers in downtown Dallas.  Here is the Dallas Morning News Story.

I am sure that this will be touted as greater justification for the continual erosion of our privacy in the name of fighting the “War on Terror ™”.  In you read the story, even the mainstream media Dallas Morning News story, and look closely, you can start to see some issues.

Here are some key passages from the article:

The arrest was part of an FBI sting operation that began after an agent monitoring an online extremist Web site discovered Smadi espousing jihad against the U.S. more than six months ago.

he parked a vehicle laden with government-supplied fake explosives

As more undercover Arabic-speaking agents engaged him, Smadi, living illegally in the U.S. in the small town of Italy, about 45 miles south of Dallas, pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden and expressed a desire to kill Americans, authorities said.

The sting culminated in Thursday’s arrest after Smadi parked a 2001 Ford Explorer Sport Trac, supplied by the FBI

After parking the vehicle, he got into another vehicle with one of the agents,

“This comes as a shock to us; he was just an awesome person,” said friend Tabatha Rogers. “He was good to us.”

All of the parts in bold are my emphasis.  So what you have, is a young Jordanian man, who is far from home.  He is quite possibly lonely for people that share his faith and/or culture.  He decides, foolishly, to get on the Internet and spout extremist Islamic ideals on a site known for its links to terrorists.  And it quite likely could have gone no further.

How many times have people made threats, promises, or outright lies when they are cloaked behind what they believe to be the full anonymity of the Internet?  But, because this man decided to make outrageous/boastful claims on the Internet, the FBI decided to put him up to it.  As you can see from the excerpts from the Dallas Morning News story above, they contacted him, acted like they were one of him, accepted him, helped him plan (by providing the car and fake explosives), and even picked him up when the “job was done”.

They provided him with “means, motive, and opportunity”.   They gave him the car, fake bomb, fake phone detonator, and get away vehicle.  This provided him with the means.  They encouraged him for six months in his native tongue.  Although I am sure we will never see the FBI side of the conversations, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if there was plenty of encouragement and acceptance in their words.  This provided him with the motivation needed to go through with what could have been idle threats.  The FBI also informed to Dallas police what was going on, told them everything was under control, and let him go through his charade until he had gone so far that the evidence was damning.  This was the opportunity.

Obviously we will never know the full story.  Perhaps there really was more to his motivation then a foolish post on a website, but from the facts we know, it looks like it is quite possible that the FBI may have actually been the catalyst that pushed a person of idle threats to one of action.

How many of us have thought angry or even murderous thoughts at one time or another?  What if those thoughts were encouraged and equipped?  Would we be able to resist the groupthink?  Would be able to stop ourselves from taking that final step over the edge?  Even though we would like to think we could resist, experiments show that we would likely have a greater than 50% likelihood of going too far if pressed. Just something to think about.

I was looking at Google news today and saw this:

Apparently either their category sorting is wrong, or a police officer in Texas being shot is entertainment.

Tags: google, mistake

Dave Berry 2008 Year in Review

Some of my favorite quotes:

• In January: “…in what some economists see as a troubling sign, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac invest $12.7 billion in Powerball tickets.”
• In April: “The economic news is also gloomy for the U.S. automotive industry, where General Motors, in a legally questionable move aimed at boosting its sagging car sales, comes out with a new model called ‘The Chevrolet Toyota.’ ”
• In August: “Elsewhere abroad, war breaks out between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, serving as a stark reminder that, in an increasingly uncertain world, we, as Americans, have no idea where these places are.”

Click the link above to read it all

Tags: funny, humor

Bears Love Petting Zoos

Things Bears Love

Tags: bears, humor, link

I called AT&T today and canceled text messaging for my cell phone.  I have never had a text plan (they charge me $.20 per text) and don’t really use it anyway.  I wouldn’t care, except AT&T decided to start spamming me with thier “service messages”  I received 9 in 24 hours.  My wife did as well.  I send STOP to the number in the text as well as spoke to two online line and one phone rep who all claimed to “opt me out” of the messages.  After I got 2 more today, I just called and had them turn off text messaging all together.  So far I haven’t received any more.

To me, the craziest thing is the fact that these messages, coming from a huge corporation, are in “text speak”.  It really makes me sad to see that the English language is devoving this quickly.  I think the world of Idiocracy may be here sooner than 500 years.

Tags: at&t, idiocracy, text

We now have word press installed on our server.  Right now the resources pages are all that I have updated.  Also, my Amazon wish list is in the bottom right of the page.  It will randomly pick 3 things from my list.  You can also click the link at the bottom to view the full list.