Do you by any chance know what it was?
Did they change colors on a National color alert system? (Or might they be adult enough not to have such a grade-schoolish system in place?)
Did their government ministers get on TV and say, “Everything is OK, don’t worry?” Or maybe “Bring ’em on!” Or, “We’ll catch ALL these terrorists, don’t you worry your little head about it!”
Or… maybe “We need more restrictive laws so our government can spy on Japanese citizens easier”?
Or…
(Below the fold, and have your guesses ready, now, don’t cheat!)
I wouldn’t know either, but I have a Japanese foreign student living here, and yesterday she was reading Japanese news via wireless laptop at the kitchen table while I cooked dinner. Then she asked me, “What is the orange terror alert? Why do you have it? I cannot understand this”.
Well, jerk my chain! Have you tried to explain our country’s policies to someone from another country lately? Oh, yeah. Explain the PATRIOT act. Explain why we’re in the Iraq war. Explain “The gov’t can secretly find out what we read at the library”. It’s worth it just for the expressions of disbelief you see on their face. And the contortions you have to go through to get the explanation conveyed.
If there’s anything that’ll make me go off, try asking me a question like this, where I’m safe to be honest. So I told her that after 9/11/2001 plane attacks GW Bush and his Republican government had installed a system of color coding to “let people in our country know how safe it is today.” I said many Democrats and others thought this was grade-school-maturity thinking — because, how safe IS it to be in America, really?
First Most other countries in the world have lost more people to terrorist or nut-job bombings on their own soil than we have in the past few decades, or to actual wars and fighting on their own soil. So America in reality is one of safest countries — “terror alert” is nonsense on that scale.
Second it’s a very big country. If ALL of Spain was blown up, and ALL of Oklahoma was blown up, it’s roughly the same territory — and people in the other 49 states are still safe. We didn’t lose our whole country. (People would be devastated — but safe.) So MOST Americans are safe every day, even if one city or entire STATE suffers something horrible. So “orange for whole country” is simple fear-mongering on that account.
Third IF we were to use such a system, it shouldn’t be used in response to a bombing in another country — what has changed here? What exactly is different than yesterday? IF we use colors, they should be used in response to what our intelligence services tell us their spies and spies of other countries tell them. “It will happen in X month. It will be planes, or, It will be buses, or, it will be trains, or it will be sports stadiums.” Then our government should tell us the truth so we can truly be safer by acting differently.
(Sidebar, did you know that our Republican/Bush/Cheney/current government IGNORED the at least 7 countries which were telling our Intelligence Service that the 9/11/2001 bombing was about to occur, and WHEN it was about to occur. How backwards is that, and why would anyone trust them now??)
Fourth Governments throughout history have tried to incite their citizens to FEAR whenever they’ve wanted to go to war. Gee, how would terror alerts for the whole country fit into that? (Pause for wheels to turn while she accesses what she knows of history to verify run-ups to war and phony nationalist rhetoric foisted on population during that run-up.) (She got it.)
Fifth What does it DO? Green/yellow/orange/red accomplishes NOTHING. What is anyone DOING to make us safer? (Not much that we can tell.)
Sidebar — we know that people in other countries laugh at us about this color-coding if they know it exists, because it’s so simplistic and grade-schoolish.
Sixth Sidebar on other ridiculous/ scary moves that’ve been instituted by our government, ostensibly to make us “Safer”. How they’re bogus, no true help. Including: how the no-fly list works, how people get put on it when their name is transliterated incorrectly. Example: 30 Arabs can’t fly because of one very common Arabic name that can transliterate 15 different ways. How Americans with former securitiy clearances can’t fly because of the no-fly list and can’t find out what they’re accused of. http://tinyurl.com/d3ps7
How I can’t travel with nail clippers or embroidery scissors in my purse, [I’M TAKING OVER THE PLANE WITH THESE NAIL CLIPPERS, STAND BACK, ALL 100-300 OF YOU!!]. How female school teachers get frisked for having a weighted bookmark, prevented from flying and taken to jail.
How all the rhetoric about “Arab this” and “Muslim that” tends to fan the flames of race and religious hatred… so we’re setting the stage for internment or group persecution based on nationality, race, or religion — like the Japanese internment camps of WWII in the USA.
(Pause to not talk about this stuff while I chop lettuce, so I don’t slice a finger from Excess Outrage. I thought and talked about how GREAT Dems and others are doing in being proactive about this stuff, and how we’re going WIN our country back, no matter how long it takes.)
Seventh Fatigue — ordinary people will tire of the alert system, and ignore it when they hear it. Then what if we need it?
Eighth IF we were to use such a system, it shouldn’t be used in response to a bombing in another country — what has changed here? What exactly is different than yesterday? It should be used in response to what our intelligence services tell us their spies and spies of other countries tell them. “It will happen in X month. It will be planes, or, it will be buses, or, it will be trains, or it will be sports stadiums.” Our government should tell us the truth so we could change our behavior to be safer.
(Sidebar, our Republican/Bush/Cheney/current government IGNORED the at least 7 countries which were telling our Intelligence Service that the 9/11/2001 bombing was about to occur, and WHEN it was about to occur. How backwards is that, and why would anyone trust them now??)
Ninth For contrast, I talked about tornado alerts in the Midwest, how they’re REAL alerts about real threats, and they don’t use them unless there is a real threat — juxtapose THAT to “colored terror alerts”. To add impact to the background of how the alerts function in today’s America, I described how some Republicans had proposed a law to have Americans spy on their neighbors, and have them tell their postman if they thought the neighbors were terrorists. Wanting to turn the postal carriers into moving, neighborhood-roaming spies.
But Dems and others spoke up (er, yelled) against it. That maybe we spoke up because we knew about the lessons of Nazi Germany, where neighbors spied on each other, kids were asked by the government to spy on their parents (and did), and a climate of abject fear was created in everyone. So we don’t want to let things get that far, so we’re speaking up and acting NOW.
But I digress! What did the Japanese do? Well, after about a 5-7 minute detailed lecture, trying to speak slowly, I asked her why she wanted to know. “My teacher in school was angry today, because of orange alert. She said that she rides bus to school every day, and the bus driver stopped it and made everyone get off and looked in their parcels. So the bus was an HOUR late. She said ‘Orange Alert’, but I could not understand what it is.”
I asked her if Japanese people had been asked to sacrifice during WWII, to conserve. “Yes.” Same here, we were asked to save metal to make more bullets or airplanes… we had rationing, even, of gas. Asked her if she knew what Bush asked us to do for his War on Terror. “No.”
Me: Go shopping.
“Go shopping!?” she asks, “How does that relate?!?” Indeed, I said, what would that REALLY do? It would make the people who own corporations richer — and they’re already rich, and use MORE resources, not less, so we need to go into anOTHER country to get more oil/metal/etc. Exactly backwards.
But I was digressing again, wasn’t I? After that, I asked what the Japanese news was today? “Well,” she said, “we have a lot of underground subways. They took the trash cans out of the stations.” They emptied them?, I asked? “No, they took the whole can out.”
I sat there stunned a minute. That makes sense, I said. It would help. Wow, doing something besides changing a color. Something to make the citizens safer. At home, in their own country, the same day. People carrying their own trash, or disposing of before entering — a real sacrifice/ inconvenience being asked of them — to create safety for the group. Positive corrective action.
Another stunned pause. Then I said, “Well, now you know why I started giving money to Democratic causes two years ago, and why I still do.” Yes, folks, she got that point BigTime. I told her I hadn’t gotten my Democracy Bond yet, but would today because of our conversation. Just finished.
Won’t you join me? Get your DNC Democracy Bond today. Just 2 million Americans at $20/month will create TWICE what the monthly income Republicans have to run their party. Let’s send a message to the FarRight Republicans that we are UNITED and READY to fund our party so we can take our country back. And restore sanity, safety and honor to it.
Join me here: http://tinyurl.com/anmz3 or via here: http://www.democrats.org/ .
[cross-posted on DailyKos] [Allison in Seattle]