God, this is what we all need to be saying every time someone says ‘terrorist’ and ‘terrorism’. It makes me want to fucking scream; They win when we panic. The fucking win when we panic.

Here’s a snippet from a great piece on Bruce Schneier – go read the whole thing, it’s worth it, but here’s his key point.

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn’t engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn’t write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn’t use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we’d reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It’s time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation — and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show’s viewership.

It’s this line that most speaks to me; “Our job is to think critically and rationally“. And this isn’t just something that is true in this context; this is something we all need to learn how to do, all the fucking time.

As usual, props to Cory at BoingBoing for pointing this out.

I’ve been trying to come up with a way to say “here’s why you better vote for John Kerry in November”. But I’m not a political writer and I’m having trouble finding the right way to say it.

It’s simple. Bush is a bad man and a bad president. He’s taken the greatest PR windfall America’s had since WWII (9/11) and turned it into a reason for the world to hate us. They didn’t really have very much reason before. Some; sure. Not much. But he took all that hate and gave it a reason, handed our enemies ammunition, made our allies hate us, made us the laughing-stock of the world.

He’s dismantling our freedoms, he’s undoing decades of environmental and social progress, and if we let him, he’s going to re-make our supreme court in a way that will go on costing us for decades.

He’s gutting our economy and he’s going to walk away rich and safe while leaving the rest of us and our kids to pay for it.

He’s not my president. He was elected by fraud and corruption, and he has run the country the same way.

I don’t care if you like Kerry. I care that you vote against Bush.

But you know, let Hunter S. Thompson, let a man who does this for a living, tell you:

…That is why George W. Bush is President of the United States, and Al Gore is not. Bush simply wanted it more, and he was willing to demolish anything that got in his way, including the U.S. Supreme Court. It is not by accident that the Bush White House (read: Dick Cheney & Halliburton Inc.) controls all three branches of our federal government today. They are powerful thugs who would far rather die than lose the election in November.

Go read that whole thing . It’s worth it.

I don’t care how you register. I don’t care about your party. This is past rebublican or democrat. This is about evil and stupidity. Kerry may or may not be the man you want running your country, but George W. Bush is not. Not if you think, not if you read, not if you value your freedoms. He’s done more harm to this country in four years than I’ve seen in my forty+ years of life. Don’t let him make it worse.

Hold your nose if you must. But vote and vote for Kerry. Vote against Bush.

Don’t let that evil bastard fuck up my country any more.