Paranoia is Free, But Still I Don't Trust the Government

I'm stealing this post, unabashedly, from eatmisery. Normally I ignore stuff like this, and puke (sorry Firefly, nearly used the v-word) at the very MENTION of Fox News or Bill O'Reilly, but after reading this, I figure: can't hurt.

This was sent to me by a good friend. it pertains to what is going on concerning Juval Aviv, who was the Israeli Agent upon whom the movie 'Munich' was based. He was Golda Meir's bodyguard, and she appointed him to track down and bring to justice the Palestinian terrorists who took the Israeli athletes hostage and killed them during the Munich Olympic Games.

In a lecture in New York City he shared information that EVERY American needs to know -- but that our government has not yet shared with us.

He predicted the London subway bombing on the Bill O'Reilly show on Fox News stating publicly that it would happen within a week. At the time, O'Reilly laughed, and mocked him saying that in a week he wanted him back on the show. Unfortunately, within a week the terrorist attack had occurred.

Juval Aviv gave intelligence (via what he had gathered in Israel and the Middle East) to the Bush Administration about 9/11, a month before it occurred. His report specifically said they would use planes as bombs and target high profile buildings and monuments. Congress has since hired him as a security consultant.

Now for his future predictions. He predicts the next terrorist attack on the U.S. will occur within the next few months.

Forget hijacking airplanes, because he says terrorists will NEVER try and hijack a plane again as they know the people onboard will never go down quietly again. Aviv believes our airport security is a joke -- that we have been reactionary rather than proactive in developing strategies that are truly effective.

For example:

1) Our airport technology is outdated. We look for metal, and the new explosives are made of plastic.

2) He talked about how some idiot tried to light his shoe on fire. Because of that, now everyone has to take off their shoes. A group of idiots tried to bring aboard liquid explosives. Now we can't bring liquids on board. He says he's waiting for some suicidal maniac to pour liquid explosive on his underwear; at which point, security will have us all traveling naked!

Every strategy we have is reactionary.

3) We only focus on security when people are heading to the gates.

Aviv says that if a terrorist attack targets airports in the future, they will target busy times on the front end of the airport when/where people are checking in. It would be easy for someone to take two suitcases of explosives, walk up to a busy check-in line, ask a person next to them to watch their bags for a minute while they run to the restroom or get a drink, and then detonate the bags BEFORE security even gets involved. In Israel, security checks bags BEFORE people can even ENTER the airport.

Aviv says the next terrorist attack here in America is imminent and will involve suicide bombers and non-suicide bombers in places where large groups of people congregate. (i.e., Disneyland, Las Vegas casinos, big cities (New York, San Francisco, Chicago, etc.) and that it will also include shopping malls, subways in rush hour, train stations, etc., as well as, rural America this time. The interlands (Wyoming, Montana, etc.).

The attack will be characterized by simultaneous detonations around the country (terrorists like big impact), involving at least 5-8 cities, including rural areas.

Aviv says terrorists won't need to use suicide bombers in many of the larger cities, because at places like the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, they can simply valet park a car loaded with explosives and walk away.

Aviv says all of the above is well known in intelligence circles, but that our U. S. Government does not want to 'alarm American citizens' with the facts. The world is quickly going to become 'a different place', and issues like 'global warming' and political correctness will become totally irrelevant.

On an encouraging note, he says that Americans don't have to be concerned about being nuked. Aviv says the terrorists who want to destroy America will not use sophisticated weapons. They like to use suicide as a front-line approach. It's cheap, it's easy, it's effective; and they have an infinite abundance of young militants more than willing to 'meet their destiny'.

He also says the next level of terrorists, over which America should be most concerned, will not be coming from abroad. But will be, instead, 'homegrown', having attended and been educated in our own schools and universities right here in the U.S. He says to look for 'students' who frequently travel back and forth to the Middle East. These young terrorists will be most dangerous because they will know our language and will fully understand the habits of Americans; but that we Americans won't know/understand a thing about them.

Aviv says that, as a people, Americans are unaware and uneducated about the terrorist threats we will inevitably face. America still has only a handful of Arabic and Farsi speaking people in our intelligence networks, and Aviv says it is critical that we change that fact SOON.

So, what can America do to protect itself? From an intelligence perspective, Aviv says the U.S. needs to stop relying on satellites and technology for intelligence. We need to, instead, follow Israel's, Ireland's and England's hands-on examples of human intelligence, both from an infiltration perspective as well as to pay attention to, and trust 'aware' citizens to help. We need to engage and educate ourselves as citizens; however, our U. S. government continues to treat us, its citizens, 'like babies'. Our government thinks we 'can't handle the truth' and are concerned that we'll panic if we understand the realities of terrorism. Aviv says this is a deadly mistake.

Aviv recently created/executed a security test for our Congress, by placing an empty briefcase in five well-traveled spots in five major cities. The results? Not one person called 911 or sought a policeman to check it out. In fact, in Chicago, someone tried to steal the briefcase!

In comparison, Aviv says that citizens of Israel are so well 'trained' that an unattended bag or package would be reported in seconds by citizen(s) who know to publicly shout, 'Unattended Bag!' The area would be quickly & calmly cleared by the citizens themselves.

Unfortunately, America hasn't been yet 'hurt enough' by terrorism for their government to fully understand the need to educate its citizens or for the government to understand that it's their citizens who are, inevitably, the best first-line of defense against terrorism.

Aviv also was concerned about the high number of children here in America who were in preschool and kindergarten after 9/11, who were 'lost' without parents being able to pick them up, and about our schools that had no plan in place to best care for the students until parents could get there. (In New York City, this was days, in some cases!)

He stresses the importance of having a plan, that's agreed upon within your family, of how to respond in the event of a terrorist emergency. He urges parents to contact their children's schools and demand that the schools too, develop plans of actions, just as they do in Israel.

Does your family know what to do if you can't contact one another by phone? Where would you gather in an emergency? He says we should all have a plan that is easy enough for even our youngest children to remember and follow.

Aviv says that the U. S. government has in force a plan, that in the event of another terrorist attack, EVERYONE's ability to use cell phones, blackberries, etc., will immediately be cut-off, as this is the preferred communication source used by terrorists and is often the way that their bombs are detonated.

How will you communicate with your loved ones in the event you cannot speak to each other? You need to have a plan.

If you understand, and believe what you have just read, then you must feel compelled to send this to every concerned parent, guardian, grandparents, uncles, aunts, whomever. Don't stop there. In addition to sharing this via e-mail, contact and discuss this information with whomever it makes sense to. Make contingency plans with those you care about. Better that you have plans in place, and never have to use them, then to have no plans in place, and find you needed them.

If you choose not to share this, or not to have a plan in place, and nothing ever occurs -- good for you! However, in the event something does happen, and even moreso, if it directly affects your loved ones, then this e-mail will haunt you forever.

Telling yourself after the fact, "I should have sent this to so and so, but deleted it as so much trash from old Bill Jones, plus, I just didn't believe it", will not change anything. You were alerted, had the chance to do something, and instead of erring on the side of caution, you chose to disregard, if nothing else, a sensible, valuable warning.

Where Am I Again?

I am....here. I'm not entirely thrilled with that fact, but there it is.

I think I'm just terminally dissatisfied with....well, pretty much everything. It's a really obnoxious way to live, but I haven't quite figured out how to shake it. Some days I think I'm getting better; some days I think I'm getting worse. I finally sat myself down a couple of weeks ago and gave myself a stern talking-to; this wallowing in despair, sleeping all day, accomplishing nothing, leaving critical tasks undone style of existence is not a viable option. I don't know why I have zero patience with myself, but it's probably because I suspect that underneath this barely-conscientious exterior, I am in reality a giant lazy slug who requires sternness to operate. Of course, this being the self-opinion with which I was raised, in large part, it makes sense.

In terms of real life as it exists outside of my navel, things are going (I guess) well. Squeaky and Tim, amazingly, still haven't lost their apartment or broken up; the baby is now just over 2 months old. I've only been out to their place once; watching Tim and his buddies drink just isn't my idea of fun. Debbie will be having her baby any day now, which is probably tops on my list of Things I Am Most Ambivalent About; on one hand I am totally thrilled with the chance to be Crazy Auntie Gladys and to get to teach her all the fun crafty things in life; on the other hand, I'm terrified that Debbie will go off into Mommyland and stop being herself. That would suck, since she's one of my very few local friends and is also one of the few people who can remember my childhood in detail. I don't think it will happen, but I've seen stranger things. And regardless of what happens parenting-wise, I hope she doesn't have the baby within the next couple of weeks; CR is going to be in town next weekend and I'd really rather not be pulled in FOUR directions at once. (I'm already going to be pulled in three--CR, work, and Mom--so the advent of TinyGirl would complicate that equation to no end.)

Speaking of things tiny....Marigold, the tiny little fluffball, is now an extremely non-tiny little fluffball. She's practically as big as Snick, and ten times as noisy. I was routinely amazed by how someone so tiny could make so much noise; I don't think I've ever had a cat be so talkative in my life. Apparently her brother, Tim and Squeaky's little Tiger, is still really small; not surprising, since he's been sickly all his life--he came to us with a cold and an eye infection, and he's been battling both of them off and on ever since. And of course, Squeaky, who was the one who couldn't bear the thought of losing Tiger to someone else, now has LittleMan--so Tiger is getting the short end of the stick attention-wise. (Squeaky says he's terribly jealous of the baby--whenever either she or Tim picks LittleMan up, Tiger gives them both the stink-eye. Stories like that are what makes me scoop Marigold up off the floor and give her a big kiss, despite her new tactic of placing a paw across my mouth the minute I pick her off the ground. It's cute, and it would be effective in making me not cuddle her silly if it wasn't always accompanied by her big motorboat of a purr.)

Work is okay, I guess. I mean, I'm glad to have the job to go to, and the paycheck, but like everyone else I'd really like to whack my boss upside the head and ask him why, exactly, he's so damn stupid. But--again, like everyone else--I put up with it. It's really sad, how dumb people get to be in charge. Even I--the one who for years has said that I was never cut out for a management job--could manage better than he does. It's just TRAGIC. But in terms of jobs, I've got no real complaints (unless you count "doing something you'd rather not be doing while NOT doing the things you were actually born to do" as grounds for a complaint--but without JP, that's going to be the rest of my life no matter what--so yeah, not so bad right now.)

And no, in case anyone was wondering, I haven't lost interest in this blog...any more than I've lost interest in anything else, which I will admit has lately been quite a lot--but since that includes literally EVERYTHING I enjoy, I don't think it's a reflection on the blog as much as it is a reflection of my interest in life. I'm trying to fix that, but man--it's rough. I have an appointment with my prescribing doc this week, and I'm going to bend his ear about this apathy thing--I'm not sure the meds are working, but I'm also not sure it's not mainly my fault as well. Either way, something has got to give; eventually either we'll find the right pill, or whatever-it-is that's making me this way will disappear, or some other miracle will happen--and I'll start enjoying things again. (And by "things" I mean "things that are not Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls", which are some of the most addictive little snacky bastards out there, and I highly advise everyone to avoid them, so there's more for me.)

Wow...It's Been THAT Long?

Okay. First: I am alive.
Second: I am...reasonably well, at the moment, though last week I could have cheerfully killed whichever member of the CTA-riding public had passed along his or her pathogens to me. (It had to be the bus. Public vehicles are like Winnebagos for microbes.) But now I am healthy, as much as I ever am, and apart from the usual suspects--the irritations of daily life and a case of morbid depression--I'm roughly indistinguishable from the masses.

However, the fact that it's now been a MONTH since I've last posted--even taking into account the whole "it-was-the-holidays" thing--startles me quite unpleasantly. That's a long damn time, is what it is, and while I'll be the first to tell you that nearly nothing of note has happened in that time, I could have at least tossed out a post or two regarding the adorable insanity of my cats--or another post about I-Go, regrettably, with a possible tangent questioning why it is, exactly, that my clinic days seem to coincide perfectly with the most damnable weather EV-ER. (Because remember that snowstorm Thursday morning, the one that hit its peak during the morning rush? Guess where I was? Oh yeah. Drivin' in a Prius and sliding around like it had skis instead of wheels. My normal 60-75 minute errand to the clinic, the grocery across the street, and back home took THREE HOURS, and adding to the insult, WLUP fired Jonathan Brandmeier, the morning guy, and so there was nothing of consequence for me to listen to while sitting in traffic. Pack of bastards.)

Other than that, though--cats and cars and totally unnecessary winter weather--not much has been going on. Maybe I'll think of something tomorrow, but I just wanted to volunteer that yes, I am alive; and that I'm not drowning in the Slough of Despond, or anything like that; not much, anyway. Hope you all are well, and I'm sure something will piss me off fairly soon.