Former MI5 chief: Response to 9/11 was 'huge overreaction'

Just wait til Sarah Palin's president. All Christian, all the time.
Gonna be fun. Christians love rules. Rules for everybody.

the United States is full of people who attend Christian churches... the United States is VERY low on people who live the Christian faith

the nation is on the verge of becoming repoed, by the Asians and the petrol states...

I thought the reaction was inadequate myself.

I'd have nuked Mecca and Medina, and announced
a planet-wide ban on the practice of I-slam the next day.

Study Questions Cost of Efforts to Fight Terrorism
Economist to Present Results at Prestigious Copenhagen Consensus Meeting
May 21, 2008

Since 9/11, annual global spending to combat terrorism has increased by about $70 billion, but according to a new study led by UT Dallas economist Todd Sandler, governments have gotten very little in return.

Sandler worked with Daniel Arce, also an economist from the UT Dallas School of Economic, Political and Public Policy, and Walter Enders from the University of Alabama, to compute the cost benefits for five approaches used to fight transnational terrorism.

Their calculations accounted for changes in GDP, the value of lives lost or injured, the costs of increased homeland security and proactive, offensive measures.


The Copenhagen Consensus studies global problems and priorities.
This study, the first of its kind, was commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus, an international project to weigh the costs and benefits of different solutions to the world’s biggest problems and to identify whether the current global priorities are the right ones.

The research found that increasing homeland security worldwide by 25 percent resulted in a payback of about 30 cents on a dollar.

Increased offensive measures, like those against the Taliban after 9/11, had a payback of 8 to 12 cents on a dollar. The biggest benefits came from increased cooperation among police forces and governments. This approach paid back $5 to $15 per dollar spent, depending on cost assumptions.

“The most effective solutions are the cheapest, but they must overcome the greatest obstacles that require either greater international cooperation or more sensitive and farsighted policymaking,” said Dr. Sandler, who is the Vibhooti Shukla Professor of Economics and Political Economy at UT Dallas.

Sandler will present the study’s findings at the 2008 Copenhagen Consensus May 26 and 27. He will join colleagues from Harvard, Oxford and Cornell, and more than 55 international economists, including four Nobel laureates, in addressing 10 of the world’s biggest challenges and assessing more than 50 solutions.

Sandler will argue that global priorities in combating terrorism need to be rethought. “There’s no panacea for terrorism, and that’s scary, but we shouldn’t allow fear to distract us from the best ways to respond to this threat,” said Sandler.

Foreign societies would hold the American people accountable for our debts regardless.

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 19, 2008; Page A01

TOKYO -- Kotaro Tamura, an investment banker turned Japanese lawmaker, has an immodest proposal for healing the sick global economy, making all Japanese richer and compelling the United States to be more deferential toward Japan.

"We are in a special position because we have huge money," Tamura said, referring to about $950 billion in government foreign reserves, $1.5 trillion in public pension funds and $15 trillion in personal financial assets, about $8 trillion of which is on deposit at shockingly low interest rates in Japanese banks.

"We should send the signal that we are ready to save the world with this money," he said in an interview.

Tamura leads a group of 65 lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party who have proposed to Prime Minister Taro Aso that Japan treat the global financial meltdown "as a huge opportunity for us."

They are urging the government to inject some of its abundant cash into troubled U.S. and European banks, in return for equity, and to purchase distressed corporate assets at fire-sale prices.

Just wait til Sarah Palin's president. All Christian, all the time. Gonna be fun. Christians love rules. Rules for everybody.

It's necessary to eradicate that sort of thing
to be able to fully enjoy the benfits of our way of life.

One cannot possibly think one has anything in common
with people who do that sort of thing.

I went to court out in Hempstead, in Nassau County,
and thay had mounted a sentry whose duty it was to
walk around the perimeter of their little courthouse all day
(reminded me of Barney Fife with his bullet in his gun),
as if the Moslems were going to hi jack another plane and crash it into it.