Blogtrek

Ambiguous Alert

"Amber alerts" have become popular in this country to warn of missing children and teenagers - alerts posted on highway signs and other places. At least one commentator suggests that this could be overused; e.g., a missing person could turn out to be a runaway or just merely hiding somewhere in the house. But there is another problem as well. Amber is a color. I know it is a girl's name and that it is named after a specific case, but it still is a color. An amber light warns that the traffic light is about to turn red, for instance. That could cause confusion with the national alert system for terrorism, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland It has us wondering what a red alert is. People could say there is an amber alert when all that he means is that the country is under an amber or yellow "elevated" terrorism alert, which it is right now, and not a missing person alert. So amber is ambiguous. Another name is needed, such as "missing person alert".

The Tapes

The Al Qaeda ("the Base") tapes shown today are a big public relations defeat for Al Qaeda. In this age of mediahyperism, the showing of tapes showing that Al Qaeda personnel gas dogs to death is going to turn people against the organization. Many in the US and its allies will solidify even more their feelings of disgust for the organization, and I wouild expect setbacks among fundamentalist Muslims in the Mideast as well. Many angry Muslims who describe America and Israel as the Great Evil will now describe Al Qaeda as just as evil. Al Qaeda will lose members and funds, and the Mideast will turn more to the west. Well, these Base people did it to themselves.