New terror

[norther practitioner]

OK, so I don't post much about politics and such, and I hope that these reads are read, and are thought about... I hope this doesn't turn political, as I see potential there, but there are some stories in these articles that scare the bajesus out of me in some senses, as I have friends that fly a lot, and I fly quite a bit, and I know if I saw this, I'd be way on the peeved, ready to throw hands if something started going down.



<http://www.womenswallstreet.com/WWS/article_landing.aspx?titleid=1&articleid=711>

<http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20040721-101403-1508r.htm>



Two articles, that y'all should read.

[red5angel]

fukking great.

[red5angel]

what I don't get is why FAM agents aren't learning arabic....

[Starchaser107]

that's a great idea.

[CaptinPickAxe]

Hey!
Here's what me and my homie Empathy think about the war, Bush, and people who serve.

www.soundclick.com/sifubeats
"Open Your Eyes"

[Banjos_dad]

NP

Yesterday my girlfriend and I were watching some news on TV, on the subject of 9/11. I said the same as you, basically, if I had been on one of those planes, I would have resisted & "I would have at least fvcked up one of them..."
Now, if they build a bomb on the plane, there won't be a lot of warning when the sh1t hits the fan. Even if people survive the blast, even if the plane stays in one piece, it will be falling...and burning sooner or later.
Our problem would be the same as the one the air cops face...go off too soon & some sh1tbag lawyer will sue you---you'll be putting Mohammed Atta Jr. through terrorism college.
I doubt there would be time to get in any serious revenge on the bomber.

If he tried to slice me with a boxcutter, that's more my speed...I hate surprises & I hate it even more when some @sshole fcks with my program. Plus, thanx to 911, flying suxors more than ever now...If they hijack my flight, they better just kill me first because I am going to be one very unhappy camper
;) :mad: :mad:
I think I would play along at first & wait for the perfect opening. Then do something shocking & horrible like stabbing the mofo in the eyeball with something, or maybe full 110% blast...to the larynx? for starters...

& what's to stop us from playing by their rules. Hey Syria, et al., every time you screw with us, the calm, peaceful, "we're above that" veneer gets a little bit thinner.
Islamic fundamentalist countries & self-declared enemies: pray to your 'god' that it doesn't come to that. We'll combine Eastern savagery...with Western efficiency. So take that cookie & shove it up yr @ss. mofos. cause anything you can do, we can do...better.

I'm so angry at these losers. They ought to spend their time trying to improve their own country *cough*[shyyithole!!] oh excuse me. Instead of bringing ours down.
Oh I'm sure there's precious nice wonderful people in Syria...statistically there must be...

[Royal Dragon]

Wow, that's damm terrifying!

If it's an obvious hijack, I think any of us here could effect a defense, but if they are sneaking about, and setting things up in the shadows, there's NOTHING we can do but blow up with the plane.

[scotty1]

Actually, you'd be in a situation where you'd be facing multiple armed attackers with very bad intent.

You'd probably get yourself killed.

Not saying you shouldn't try (if it's apparent you're going to die anyway) but it seems a little unrealistic to expect that anyone on thos board can take on 5+ people, esp. death-wish terrorists.

[Volcano Admim]

I am so scared :(

nah i didnt even read those stuff
people need to learn how to write their info in less words
this world is too **** fast, i dont have 2 minutes to read stuff like that anymroe

[Royal Dragon]

scotty1,
I don't know, we have all been playing this game for most of our adult lives. On an aircarft you can use the seating to limit them to two at a time (FT and Back) This put the odds BACK in our favor.

You know all those finger thrusts into gravel I used to do? Or how about the grip training or Iron Palm? Throw in the fact that I'm just a bit nutts too. You think when going against multiple attackers that that won't give a serious advantage over a normal person in the same situation?

Now put one of us, who hasn't been a slacker the last few years into the situation, like 7* or WD, tell me the odds aren't going up even further.

Remember, they don't fight by the rules, but in that senario, WE don't either. All that stuff banned in the UFC, that we drill in class, would all be violently fair game.

Fighting them, would be the same as fighting anyone. Just becasue they are "big bad scary Terrorists" does not mean a cutting slice to the eye socket, and elbow to the side of the head, or a short powered leapord strike to the throat won't incapacitate them any less than anyone else. Human anatomy is human anatomy. The more enraged they get, the more enraged we get. If you stay in the aisle, you only have to deal with two of them, and if YOU fight, other passengers will stand up too, so you may end up only dealing with one at a time anyway.

Don't over think it, if it happens, concentright on the goal of dismembering them with your bare hands, your subconcious will make your body move accordingly.

[scotty1]

I don't know, we have all been playing this game for most of our adult lives. On an aircarft you can use the seating to limit them to two at a time (FT and Back) This put the odds BACK in our favor.

You think being attacked from the front and rear, possibly with weapons, in an aisle where you can't move sideways is putting the odds in YOUR favour?


All that stuff banned in the UFC, that we drill in class, would all be violently fair game.

What the eye jabs and fish hooks?:) I think you'll find they're too deadly to drill realistically.

Sorry, I'm just really skeptical. If you're going to die then sure thing give it a go, but everyone is always saying about how bloody difficult it is to fight multiple attackers, and then you're confident about taking on a gang of armed terrorists?

Not saying it's impossible, but....

[Tak]

Originally posted by red5angel
what I don't get is why FAM agents aren't learning arabic....

Nobody who speaks Arabic wants to teach them...

[Starchaser107]

"Sorry, I'm just really skeptical. If you're going to die then sure thing give it a go, but everyone is always saying about how bloody difficult it is to fight multiple attackers, and then you're confident about taking on a gang of armed terrorists?

Not saying it's impossible, but...."

the alternative is to what?
die in submission?

no way.

[Royal Dragon]

Turn sideways, drive them back with sidekicks.

I'm not saying we are guarentted wins, but we don't have to take the pessimistic veiw either. OUR determination counts just as much as theirs.

[norther practitioner]

I'm saying also, hijacking and trying to use the plane as a missle is one thing, another is these dudes building bombs on the plane.

[KC Elbows]

You may as well fight and hope someone backs you up.

However, that type attack seems, well, anticlimactic from the viewpoint of the terrorists, just blowing up a plane. I would think that would suggest that thier abilities are much diminished from 9-11. Unless it's a dirty bomb or something.

[red5angel]

Nobody who speaks Arabic wants to teach them...

not true.



KC - terrorist just want to do damage, and cause, well, terror. Even if they "just" blow up a plane, that strikes terror in the hearts of all those people who fly all the time. Psychologically if they were to hit several planes at once, it would have a similar impact to the 9/11 attacks.

[MasterKiller]

Originally posted by red5angel
terrorist just want to do damage, and cause, well, terror. Even if they "just" blow up a plane, that strikes terror in the hearts of all those people who fly all the time. I don't think so. That's a very simplistic view of terrorism. Even terrorist usually have an agenda, and the damage is usually a means of getting that agenda recognized. For example, according to the 9/11 commission, the guy who plotted 9/11 liked America enough, was trained at an American university, but hated our policy of compliance with Israel, which he wanted to protest. He wasn't trying to cause 'terror' for the sake of it, or collapse 'freedom' or any such nonsense....

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&ncid=2026&e=2&u=/latimests/20040723/ts_latimes/newplotdetailsemerge

[red5angel]

ah keeerist, I'm not going ot argue this with you bleeding hearts. I know what teerorist are trying to accomplish, mine description was basic but the essentials. Its WRONG any way you look at it period.

[Kristoffer]

Originally posted by Tak
Nobody who speaks Arabic wants to teach them...

Idiot


If I'm not mistaken there were a plane-jackin in wich the jackers sliced the troath of all men on the plane, so nobody would pose a threat. I guess one could use ones backpack as a shield to get in close. If you can take the guy out and take his blade you've even the odds slightly. If there's guns around, start praying

[KC Elbows]

Originally posted by red5angel
KC - terrorist just want to do damage, and cause, well, terror. Even if they "just" blow up a plane, that strikes terror in the hearts of all those people who fly all the time. Psychologically if they were to hit several planes at once, it would have a similar impact to the 9/11 attacks.

I'm not sure it would have a similar impact, but it wouldn't be good, nonetheless.

Still, it seems like "back to business", this is what terrorists were doing before. Again, unless it were something blowing up more than a plane or two, this is pretty much the eighties, only a little closer to home.

And, for the record, I am a dirty hippy, not a bleeding heart. A bleeding heart is what a german shepherd(or any dog) has in its mouth after a tussle with a corgi(any corgi).

And to take the terrorist thing a little further, they want to cause terror to incite the US to establish a habit of over policing too large an area, so that the US is stuck either policing the world to an extent that is prohibitive in cost and manpower, thus spreading us thin, or choosing to back out of world affairs. By striking anywhere anytime, which is pretty cheap for them, they force us to police everywhere all the time, which is hugely expensive and poor for our morale, and also breeds discontent in nations that object to our policing, exacerbating our problems.

It was suggested to me that the US plan was to get the extremists to fight inside Iraq, thus drawing them away from other places. I wonder what this development says for that approach.

I personally think that fighting on it's own is not a solution, just a necessity, but that other means will ultimately be needed to actually undermine the terrorist's ability to recruit, perhaps by actually helping Iraq, not Halliburton, to Iraq's resources.

But then, I am a dirty hippy.

[jun_erh]

mk- I don't think Israel is even mentioned in Bin Ladens fatwa thingy. It had alot to do with western influence and also US soldiers in Suadi Arabia, not to mention his weird take on religious duty. ISrael is a common rallying point though for a variety of reasons.

littlegreenfootballs (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/) (it's a conservitive sort of gossip site not unlike drudge) has a bunch of stuff on this incident, though I think the guys on the plane were actually musicians in town to play a gig.

[Banjos_dad]

re Scotty1's point--


Yeah, outnumbered by armed opponents.

But in this scenario, weren't we going to BE KILLED ANYWAY...?

I'd rather die after jabbing a ballpoint pen all the way into some mthrfckn @sshle's eye socket, than burning to death in the crash/detonation whatever...in my seat like a pvssy. You can sit there watching, waiting for your salvation, which ain't coming.

What are they going to do...even if you manage to "punt" and delay your death, get within a certain range of the penatgon or the white house, wtc or whatever, you're going to be eating up a couple of Sidewinders, courtesy of the USAF/Homeland Defense, before the plane is aloowed to reach target.

And like I pointed out yesterday, & NP also brought up, if the plan is to detonate a bomb on board a plane in flight, there won't be time to react. Unless you're like the people in "Independence Day," who can escape from explosions/shockwaves by running :rolleyes: There won't be jack anyoe could do about that short of preventing the assembly in the first place.

Brings us back to: Pragmatic & Pro-active vs. "Civil Rights."

[Banjos_dad]

Plus, even if there is no averting the hijack, wouldn't you want to at least make it more difficult?

When someone's coming to cut your throat...

...That would be a good time to resist.


Jesus christ. (shaking his head at the obviousness of it)

[BM2]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/25/wfly25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/25/ixworld.html

[David Jamieson]

That article reads like a bunch of paranoid malarky to me.

Any follow up at all?

any?

says that they were all carted off in the end?

or is it all cloak and dagger? YOu would think that would be a big pride to dump a team of fourteen.


:rolleyes:

Man, yes there are terrorists, there are pedophiles, tehre are evil people in the world and some of them are white, uptight and out of sight folks.

Kindly old ladies who poison birds, quiet neighbours who kill children, soldiers who rape, then kill, politicians who lie to your face and lawyers who destroy peoples lives as well as corrput policemen who sell hardcore drugs to kids or shoot innocent people because of their own fear.

And then there's zealous people who because they hold a belief system close to themselves, they lash out and try to kill anything contrary to that system.

these people are arabs in some cases, Israelis in others, Americans in some, Canadians, British, French....

POint is, being arabic is painted as being evil because that is the enemy that many have chosen to identify.

Subsequently, a great many people are now viewed with fear, and that breeds only more fear and that my friends is just plain ignorance.

Anyway, I think that article is just propaganda, can anyone show any followup on that from another new source? Any newsource that can confirm it? Or is it just a bunch of smear on people who are different culturally?

cheers

[cerebus]

Hmmm, let's see. Al Qaida flew airplanes into the WTC and the Pentagon, killing thousands of people. They've threatened to continue a wave of terror against America. Al Qaida is pretty close to 100% Middle Eastern males in it's makeup. But we shouldn't be wary of such things as that woman witnessed on the plane?

Wonder if you'd feel that way if you'd lost any loved ones in the 9/11 attack?

[SaMantis]

While the article brought up a couple good points -- terrorists are probing airline security, and it's likely that neither the airlines nor the marshals have an effective way to prevent this, or an outright attack -- it is presented in a rather breathless manner. And frankly, quoting Anne Coulter -- hardly an expert at anything other than mouthing off -- vaporizes much of the author's credibility.

I've accepted a few things each time I fly:

1. Terrorist groups have and are continuing to probe U.S. security at several points, including airlines. Frankly, that's to be expected of any decent terrorist group.

2. Chances are very low of surviving an onboard incident staged by a group bent on suicide; either the terrorists will get you, or the Air Force will.

3. If I get the chance in such an incident, I will do my best to kick terrorist ass.

4. With my luck, I'll probably get it in a freak accident, like the tail of the airplane falling off thanks to faulty maintenance due to airline layoffs caused by the recession precipitated by 9/11. In which case I will do my best to make it to the drink cart for one last shot of Bush Mills before we hit the ground.

[Banjos_dad]

When your heads jammed in the sand, your ass is sticking out in the air...& you won't see anyone coming up behind you :D

You go ahead and be PC, as you like. I'll trust the hairs on the back of my neck...and live to an old age.

I'd rather have someone think I am a redneck ******* (as I may in fact be), than to be a sheep and ignore something bad fixing to happen, and then die as a result.

Yeah, that woman is not the best author I have ever sampled, she could have presented that in a less hysterical tone...that's no reason to discount her take on what happened though...especially when the entire plane basically had a consensus on what seemed to be happening.
...

On a lighter note, if it were a movie, someone should have *****-slapped "Annie" & said "Pull yourself together," or maybe "Snap out of it!"

The syrian Wayne Newton...his visa application should have been denied for that reason alone, LOL

[David Jamieson]

Nothing PC about it boys, If you read my post, you'll see I am asking a couple of simple questions.

None of which you have answered and instead you have chosen to remain with your firm belief that this story is true.

All i'm saying is that it isn't verified and that fear and paranoia seem to be en vogue in America.

If you see someone attempting to commit an act of terror, buy all means, summon up you will and go boot their ass.

There are still way too many unanswered question regarding the nature of Al Qaida, the nature of terrorism and so on.

The 911 report lays the blame for the wtc incident squarely on the shoulders of US foreign policy it seems. You can't whip a dog and expect it not to bite you when you extend your hand to get something you want is what I'm saying.

Anyway, It's not about being PC so, keep that evasive ambling to yourselves.

Most of you wouldn't recognize a criminal if they came up and bludgeon you with a bat.
:rolleyes:

All the tough talk in here is laughable in my opinion.

So, any secondary sources that can verify that paranoid rant as linked to above? If so, then I will give it further consideration. But to go by a single source is in my opinion the height of ignorance, barring direct personal experience.

But in regards to the "news" ? come on, and keep the retorts down, just gimme the facts.

[SaMantis]

On a lighter note, if it were a movie, someone should have *****-slapped "Annie" & said "Pull yourself together," or maybe "Snap out of it!"

heh heh ... shades of "Airplane" there ...

Woman passenger freaking out and screaming "OMG we're gonna die!" and a guy slapping her, saying "Calm down! Snap out of it!" Then the camera pans back to show a line of people all waiting their turn to slap her around.


On a heavier note, why haven't there been any attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11? The terrorists are supposedly constantly probing our defenses, the media keeps pointing out vulnerable spots around the country (not sure if that's hurting or helping), and many people suspect the new Dept. of Homeland Security is a hopeless bureaucratic mess. It's been nearly 3 years. So, is the govt. actually doing a good job protecting the country, or are the terrorists simply hanging back and hoping we'll implode from all the political and personal infighting?

[jun_erh]

Personally I've had enough and am ready to start nuking.

[Banjos_dad]

jun_erh, that makes 2 of us.

And then give the glassy green parking lot to Israel :D


KL, I can't answer your question...but as someone whose perpective is that of well, an American, who lives in America, I'd like to poiint out that fear & paranoia aren't 'en vouge,' more like 'de rigeur.'

If we had been more afraid and paranoid in 1999, we would have blocked the terrorist attacks: according to findings of the 911 Commission not to mention Michael Moore's most excellent documentary "Fahrenheit 911," there was ample warning that exactly what did happen, would happen.

And Mrs. Hysterical, the Syrian Wayne Newton Mob, and I would only have to arrive at the airport 1 hr before takeoff...& could hide joints in our socks like the good old daze...

[cerebus]

Heh, heh. Well Kung Lek I like how you try throwing in the snide remark about us not knowing a criminal if they came up & bludgeoned us! Perhaps YOU can inform us exactly what "a criminal" looks like since you seem to be acting as if YOU know. Afterall I've only spent most of my adult life since 1988 as a cop and then a corrections officer, I'm sure you must know much better than little ol' me. :p

As for the truth of the story presented, I can't help you there. However, if the story IS true, then I have no problem with the way she viewed the situation. I see people around me everyday sleep-walking like they have their heads up their arses, this woman was at least paying attention (if the storie's true, of course ;) ).

[David Jamieson]

Perhaps YOU can inform us exactly what "a criminal" looks like since you seem to be acting as if YOU know. Afterall I've only spent most of my adult life since 1988 as a cop and then a corrections officer, I'm sure you must know much better than little ol' me.

well, then you would know that a criminal looks like anyone on the street, after all, what makes a criminal a criminal but laws?

the point is that the devil doesn't have a goatee and horns and god isn't an old man with a flowing beard.

By the way, did you know that in psychological comparisons between inmates and prison guards, there is remarkably little variance? :D You both are doing time, just one of you is getting paid better for it.

And the reason you guys can't answer whether or not that article is credible and has variated sources is because it doesn't. It's one paranoid rant that hasn't been verified and it in itself perpetuates the fear of muslim men.

You guys would not believe how different it is up here in the great white north. Aside from the fact we are constantly bombarded with American fear through our TVs and all this "snideness" about how we aren't fighting the war on terror because goodness gracious we are actually ok with Muslim communities and Mosques and women in Hijabs and cultural differences and in fact we encourage cultural diversity here.

Apparently down south, it's a must to be american first, then you can say your heritage. Up here, it's the other way around.

The only terrorists we have experienced here were Quebecois seperatists, but even they have cooled off since the seventies. :p

Anyway, I am not seeing that article as having much sway other than to perpetuate orange alerts and fear of arabs.

people are just people, we all want to have peace ultimately. the warmongers are many in size shape and colour and certainly aren't just arabs.

I seem to recall it was a "nice quiet boy" who blew up the Edward R Murrough(sp?) building, and I also seem to recall it was a US president who never took accountability for a few dead Uni students in Kent State ohio some time ago even though it was he who unleashed the National guard on a peaceful protest...and well..I could go on, but I would expect that you would be informed about your own track record historically, I don't even want to mention the meddling in Central America and elsewhere that the US felt was necessary to keep the free world free
:rolleyes:

Anyway, It is not that hard to see why there is so much vilification towards American policies outside of their own nation.

There needs to be an understanding that to use a heavy hand will only result in a heavy hand being returned upon you.

That is the way of the world.

[cerebus]

Jeez KL, when you get on your soapbox and try to sound righteous you really do get carried away. Okay, let's see:

One of your gripes seems to be that people are being singled out or stereotyped due solely to their appearance/ ethnicity. WRONG! Their ethnicity was only a part of the whole picture. Their behavior would have seemed suspicious and merited investigation regardless of their ethnicity (and to ignore it BECAUSE of their ethnicity due to "political correctness" is purely stupid).

Again you try to take a pot shot at me with your comment about the psychological similarities between prisoners and prison guards. Yes, I'm aware of such studies, yes that's how it appeared to me as well. That's why I don't work as a prison guard anymore, the job sucks.

I, for one, could care less what Canada does or doesn't do in Bush's "war on terrorism". Bush needs to be voted out.

You also seem to think that all Americans are against Muslims, mosques, etc. Wrong again. One of my relatives is a Muslim from Egypt, he's one of the best people I've ever known. Even if I had never met him though, I would still harbor neither fear of, nor hatred for Muslims.

Though you're obviously unaware of it, most Americans (at least in MY experience) are very much in favor of cultural diversity.

You don't seem to understand that I'm NOT saying that ethnicity/ appearance equals criminal/ bad guy.

Pull your head outta your arse though and realize that if a particular person or group of people matches the physical description of a known "bad guy" or "bad guys" and is behaving in a manner which is consistent with how the "bad guys" in question are expected to behave (especially when that behavior is out of the ordinary) then you'd have to be stupid to ignore it & say "Ah, can't be! It'll never happen to me." or whatever.

[David Jamieson]

No, I don't think all americans are against muslims. I am saying that there is an image being perpetuated by some areas of the media and teh imagery is particularly strong coming out of the US.

Also, if it was some white college boys in preppy jackets moving in and out of the bathrooms on a plane I wonder if that article would even exist and yet it is obvious by the track record that white power groups in the US have as much reason to probe security and commit terror strikes as any muslim or other group.

So, that article is perpetuating an already existant stereotype that is visited and revisited time and again in teh US media be it print, radio or television.

There was a guy who held a Canadian passport who was deported to Syria by US officials, jailed there, tortured and finally released without charges! He is now suing the US and Canadian governments for their misdeeds and this is important because he had and still has a valid canadian passport ad is a Canadian citizen.

so a) he was targeted because of his ethinicity

and b) you would think a Canadian passport friggin meant something.

The problem is with this whole fear of ethnicity thing and it is tantamount to racial profiling in a new form. I'm sure some of our black friends on this board have dealt with that nonsense and wonder about taking that drive to the store or should they walk?

I am also not saying the you in particular are equating muslim to criminal cerebus, I am saying that this meme is being perpetuated by unsubstantiated articles such as are in the link above.

there was even talk on these forums post 911 about people being freaked out by secretive muslim type folks in the neighbourhood burger joint because tehy were looking around fertively etc etc.

Meanwhile, what is happening here is targeting based upon unreliable information.

It is easy to make an enemy of a country where the culture is radically different. THat is a given. How much exploitation of that fact is going on in the states as opposed to say well...any other country? Granted, the Israelis now have the biggest wall since Germany and the Bush admin is a-ok with it. This is a huge step back when we let the Bushes and Sharons of the world get away with essentially the same crap Saddam gets away with and never mind Kadafi, or Mubutu, or the Saudi Royal family, or the Syrian royal family or etc etc etc. All of them undertake criminal acts towards humanity and have a terrible human rights record, but here we sit...looking at this mess and we wonder what can be done?

It is quite absurd isn't it?

[rogue]

Apparently down south, it's a must to be american first, then you can say your heritage. Up here, it's the other way around. You're right it's all those Irish-Americans, African-Americans and Italian-Americans who buck the trend down here. Get your facts straight first KL.


Also, if it was some white college boys in preppy jackets moving in and out of the bathrooms on a plane I wonder if that article would even exist and yet it is obvious by the track record that white power groups in the US have as much reason to probe security and commit terror strikes as any muslim or other group.

Well KL it wasn't Booger and Gilbert representing the Tri-Lambdas or Delta House members Otter, Flounder and Bluto flying planes into buildings or beheading hostages. They have names like Khalid, Mohamed and Waleed. While I'm sure there have been bad things done to Muslims here I don't believe it's all that much. The Paki guys with names like Abdul, Khalid, Mohammed and Waleed are still running the taco joint down the street, the Syrian market is still open and my kid still plays ball and hangs out with the guys kid.

Yeah there was Tim McVey but it's not hard to infiltrate and stop the Neo-Nazis.

[cerebus]

I'll tell ya' KL, if the 9/11 attacks had been carried out by IWhiGrA (Insane White Grandmothers of America) and I saw a bunch of old white ladies doing the same things as the Syrian musicians supposedly did, I'd wanna know WTF was up! And Yeah, I WOULD report them to the flight crew. So don't try to make it seem like it's a big race issue.

If I'm a street cop and neo nazi skinheads have been torching cars in my city and I see some white guys with shaved heads wearing Doc Martins and red suspenders acting suspicious around a parked car should I ignore them just 'cause I don't wanna be "racially insensitive"? Hey, they might not be neo nazis. They could just be average skins (or just guys with a weird sense of style). Even if they ARE neo nazi skins, they might not be the ones doing the crimes, so why would I even get suspicious? Just keep my eyes on the road & keep driving right?

[David Jamieson]

k guys, it's meandering all over the place.

Is there any newswire story anywhere that corroberates this article?

I haven't found one, I think the article is suspect until there is corroberation. For instance, a blurb somewhere that states that 14 men were apprehended and questioned in regards to probing the security of this particular airline.

Otherwise, it just looks like a muslim bashing article designed to incite fear and suspicion towards muslims.

I am not saying anything at all on a personal level to anyone here.

[scotty1]

Some of you guys seem to have missed a couple of vital sentences in my posts, so I'll remind you of them:

"Not saying you shouldn't try (if it's apparent you're going to die anyway) "

"If you're going to die then sure thing give it a go"

Thanks, next time pay attention! :)

[Chang Style Novice]

In this space was supposed to be installment No. 6 of my multiweek dissertation on airports and terminals. The topic is being usurped by one of those nagging, Web-borne issues of the moment, in this case a reactionary scare story making the cyber-rounds during the past week.

The piece in question, "Terror in the Skies, Again?" is the work of Annie Jacobsen, a writer for WomensWallStreet.com. Jacobsen shares the account of the emotional meltdown she and her fellow passengers experienced when, aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Los Angeles, a group of Middle Eastern passengers proceeded to act "suspiciously." I'll invite you to experience "Terror" yourself, but be warned it's quite long. It needs to be, I suppose, since ultimately it's a story about nothing, puffed and aggrandized to appear important.

The editors get the drama cooking with some foreboding music: "You are about to read an account of what happened," counsels a 70-word preamble. "The WWS Editorial Team debated long and hard about how to handle this information and ultimately we decided it was something that should be shared ... Here is Annie's story" [insert lower-octave piano chord here].

What follows are six pages of the worst grade-school prose, spring-loaded with mindless hysterics and bigoted provocation.

Fourteen dark-skinned men from Syria board Northwest's flight 327, seated in two separate groups. Some are carrying oddly shaped bags and wearing track suits with Arabic script across the back. During the flight the men socialize, gesture to one another, move about the cabin with pieces of their luggage, and, most ominous of all, repeatedly make trips to the bathroom. The author links the men's apparently irritable bladders to a report published in the Observer (U.K.) warning of terrorist plots to smuggle bomb components onto airplanes one piece at a time, to be secretly assembled in lavatories.

"What I experienced during that flight," breathes Jacobsen, "has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats."

Intriguing, no? I, for one, fully admit that certain acts of airborne crime and treachery may indeed open the channels to a debate on civil liberties. Pray tell, what happened? Gunfight at 37,000 feet? Valiant passengers wrestle a grenade from a suicidal operative? Hero pilots beat back a ****pit takeover?

Well, no. As a matter of fact, nothing happened. Turns out the Syrians are part of a musical ensemble hired to play at a hotel. The men talk to one another. They glance around. They pee.

That's it?

That's it.

Now, in fairness to Jacobsen, I'll admit that in-flight jitters over the conspicuous presence of a group of young Arabs is neither unexpected nor, necessarily, irrational. She speaks of seven of the men standing in unison, a moment that, if unembellished, would have even the most culturally open-minded of us wide-eyed and grabbing our armrest. As everybody knows, it was not a gaggle of Canadian potato farmers who commandeered those jetliners on Sept. 11. See also the legacy of air crimes over the past several decades, from Pan Am 103 to the UTA bombing to the failed schemings of Ramzi Yousef, the culprits each time being young Arab males.

Air crews and passengers alike are thus prone to jumpiness should a certain template of race and behavior be filled. Jacobsen's folly is in not being able to step back from that jumpiness -- neither during the flight itself, at which point her worry and behavior are at least excusable, nor well after touching down safely. Speaking as a pilot, air travel columnist, and American, I find Jacobsen's 3,000-word ghost story of Arab boogeymen among the most overwrought and inflammatory tracts I've encountered in some time.

Most disturbing of all has been the pickup from Internet bloggers and news sources, including ABC, CNN, MSNBC and the New York Times. The writer hops a flight to California on which absolutely nothing of danger occurs, and the following are among the citations:

"Harrowing piece"
"The frightening true story"
"Disturbing account"
"Riveting article"
"An absolute must-read"

"Read all about the breaking Northwest airlines scare," advertises TheLosAngelesNews.com, suggesting perhaps a narrowly averted crash, a bomb defused during flight or a thwarted skyjacking. Click on over to hear instead about the toilet habits of a group of Syrian minstrels and one middle-aged woman's alarmist reaction to them. No matter; over the past week or so Jacobsen has found herself linked and excerpted in every last crevice of the Web. Those of you not convinced of just how paranoid and xenophobic Americans can be, look no further than the following online posts, which, along with thousands like them, have emerged in direct response to this story:

"You will never, ever, catch me on an airplane again!"

"My advice would be to de-plane as soon as I counted 14 Arabs as passengers. "

"Soon after 9/11 we were in a local McDonald's and a group of Middle Eastern men came in and got carry-out. They sat in their van for a while then headed North. I felt scared out of my wits. I wrote down a description of the vehicle and license, but never did anything with it. Guess next time I won't be so stupid."

...continued...

[Chang Style Novice]

conclusion

Jacobsen spins her experience into a not-so-veiled call for racial profiling of airline passengers. Help me out with this one: If only those musicians had been interrogated prior to boarding, it would have been revealed they were, in fact ... musicians. (They had, of course, endured the same concourse X-ray and metal detector rigmarole as everyone else, and were in possession of valid passports and visas.)

My own feelings on passenger profiling are mixed, and I'm not as liberal on the issue as you might expect. However, I do think singling out a specific ethnicity for extra screening is less a racist idea than a wasteful and ineffective one. Does it not occur to people that Muslim radicals come in all complexions and from many nations -- from the heart of black Africa to the archipelagoes of Southeast Asia? (Many Syrians, no less, are fair-haired and light-skinned.) Does it not occur to people that terrorists are clever, resourceful and, in the end, bound to outwit such obvious snares? The notion that 14 saboteurs, replete with silk-screened track suits effectively advertising themselves as such, would obviously and boisterously proceed in and out of an airplane lavatory, taking turns to construct a bomb, is so over-the-top ludicrous it deserves its own comedy sketch. Indeed, Jacobsen is trying to portray a scene of angst and fear, but she inadvertently scripts out a parody. I half-expected her to tell me that one of the men wore a cardboard sign labeled "TERRORIST."

On Tuesday morning I appeared as a guest on a conservative, drive-time radio show in Philadelphia, and Jacobsen was the hot issue. The host, without much else to go on, proposed the Syrians had choreographed a "dry run" for a future attack. (At one point he referred to the involved carrier, Northwest Airlines, as "Northeastern.") When I dared express doubt, and noted that investigators from the Transportation Security Administration and the FBI had confirmed the men's identities and motives, I was mocked, ridiculed and eventually hung up on. The very suggestion that the men could have been innocent musicians seemed, in the eyes of the host and callers, preposterous. They had to be terrorists. Disagreeing got me called "a frickin' idiot," and a caller demanded to know which airline I worked for so he could be certain never to ride on a plane with a traitor like me at the controls.

Stop the presses: A sequel to "Terror in the Skies, Again?" has now been posted on WomensWallStreet.com, in which Jacobsen reinfects the conversation with a fresh dose of mongering. "And I now have another important question," she writes. "Is there a link between my experience ... and the arrest of Ali Mohamed Almosaleh by Customs agents at the Minneapolis Airport on July 7?" Almosaleh, a Syrian, was allegedly carrying a suicide note and "anti-American material."

Jacobsen's hint at conspiracy, however, is based exclusively on the coincidence that Almosaleh and the musicians happen to all be Syrian citizens. I see. That a supposition this groundless and stupid can make it into print and entice the likes of major news networks should outrage any clear-thinking American. How about we seek out all Syrians and put their names on airline blacklists?

Jacobsen's sequel is peppered with incendiary quotes from industry sources. Says an airline pilot: "The terrorists are probing us all the time." Another confides a maddeningly baseless belief that Jacobsen had been "likely on a dry run," while another states, "The incident you wrote about, and incidents like it, occur more than you like to think. It is a 'dirty little secret' that all of us, as crew members, have known about for quite some time."

Which dirty little secret, exactly, are we talking about? That foreigners ride on airplanes?

In a moment of truly ghastly philosophizing, Jacobsen includes a manipulative passage in which she is smitten with anguish as she recollects a photograph taken during the Sept. 11 attacks. She gives us this: "Political correctness has become a major road block for airline safety ... I think about the meaning of 'dry run.' And then I think about what it means to be politically correct. And I keep coming up blank."

So do I.

Aside from matters of politics and general opinion, is Jacobsen playing fast and loose with the facts? There appear to be embellishments in her original tale.

Aboard flight 327, as she, her husband and several passengers and crew are having their nervous breakdowns, comes this instance of B-movie tension: "[The flight attendant] leaned over and quietly told my husband there were federal air marshals sitting all around us. She asked him not to tell anyone and explained that she could be in trouble for giving out that information. She then continued serving drinks."

Are we to believe not only that an airline professional was unwise enough to reveal such a thing, but that a group of marshals -- not one, not two, but several -- having gotten word that a covey of Arabs were flying to LAX, were on hand to trail and observe them? That's some tight logistical planning. Are we following Middle Easterners through airports now? If so, how does that work at Kennedy International, I wonder, where foreign airliners carrying thousands of passengers arrive daily from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, the UAE and elsewhere? That's a lot of dry runs, and there's no love lost, after all, between Muslim radicals and the governments who own and operate these airlines -- Pakistan International, Saudi Arabian, EgyptAir, Royal Jordanian, etc. Such subtleties are lost on that segment of the public who'd prefer a more digestible ****-and-bull yarn from high above the American heartland. As for those wacky airlines from abroad, why not simply ban them from American airspace?

Clearly I'm in a fit of envy over Jacobsen's cheap grab at notoriety. I've got a book out and could use some publicity. Here, let me give it a try.

Late last summer I boarded a nonstop flight from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to Newark, N.J. After taking my seat, I noticed that well over a hundred of my fellow passengers looked to be Muslims! Yes, that's the same faith adhered to by those dastardly perpetrators who knocked down our Trade Center and demolished part of the Pentagon. Not only that, but our aircraft, a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777, was registered and maintained by a company headquartered in a predominantly Muslim nation! What if the cargo holds had been stuffed full of anthrax or TNT by unscrupulous terrorists back in Kuala Lumpur!

Several passengers wore conservative Islamic dress -- men in white dishdashas; women concealed in full black burqa. Our plane contained a Muslim prayer enclave (for possible use by terrorists preparing for the throes of martydrom), and the seatback video displayed a graphic of the qibla, showing real-time distance and heading to Mecca. En route toward New York, dozens of Muslim passengers were seen socializing and using the lavatories, in some cases blatantly ignoring the illuminated seat-belt sign!

To my relief and utter astonishment, we landed safely (and on time).

Jacobsen simmers her own account in gratuitous detail and melodrama. It plays like a Hollywood disaster film -- the young child, the would-be villain who smiles innocently in a moment of spooky foreshadowing. We're waiting for the gunshots, the fireball from the lavatory, the marshals jumping up to yell, "Hit the floor!"

That her story concludes in such a painfully boring anticlimax ought to be the very point, and in the final few pages she still has time for a constructive moral, the clear lesson being not the potentials of global terror, but the dangers of our own preconceptions and imagination. Instead, she pulls a vile U-turn and chooses to bait us with racist innuendo and fearmongering. Nothing happened, but something might have happened, and so it serves us to remain frightened and draconian at all costs, furthering our nation's pathetic embrace of maximum paranoia.

Jacobsen's kicker: "So the question is ... Do I think these men were musicians? I'll let you decide. But I wonder, if 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?"

Excuse me? She concludes, as did the radio host Tuesday morning, by insinuating that the men were terrorists, despite every shred of evidence, not to mention common sense, arguing to the contrary. And with that her article, and her credibility with it, plummets from merely sensationalist to inexcusably offensive.

[Shaolinlueb]

kung leks opinions shouldnt count since he is

A. he's from canada
and
B. he's from canada

and we all know canada isnt a real country. :o

:D ;)






































jk KL

[kwaichang kaned]

Get the link but go to

www.Snopes.com

under the "what's New" banner is a piece about this report some may find interesting

[David Jamieson]

all kidding aside, I am neither a member of a gaggle and I haven't farmed a potato since I was 23.

I prefer to travel via motorcycle over aircraft except in cases where I would find myself going over an ocean.

And thanks for the opposing views to the article.

We may all now have a more well rounded view of the situation and can therefore come to a sounder opinion on the subject of this article.

cheers

[MasterKiller]

White people are running out of skin colors to be afraid of.

[Chang Style Novice]

The second worst terrorist attack on US soil was committed by white people. I suggest racial profiling of anyone who looks a little like Tim McVeigh.

[David Jamieson]

I am waiting for the unbelieveable day when someone says it is a good idea to weaponize orbital platforms to guard us against alien species. :rolleyes:

Believe me, we are gonna hear that one eventually. Especially after the first hostile encounter that becomes generally known.

lol

[red5angel]

You guys would not believe how different it is up here in the great white north. Aside from the fact we are constantly bombarded with American fear through our TVs and all this "snideness" about how we aren't fighting the war on terror because goodness gracious we are actually ok with Muslim communities and Mosques and women in Hijabs and cultural differences and in fact we encourage cultural diversity here.


and here you were doing so good kung lek.....

the fact is, WE don't have a problem with muslim communities either. As a matter of fact, here in minneapolis we have a huge Somali population and haven't had any problems, even after they found evidence on not one, but two gentlemeans computers to warrant snatching them up.

I'd also like to point out that the Sept. 11th attacks occurred in America and not Canada. Sure some canadians were killed in those attacks but Canada is going to sit idly by while america is attacked because "it could never happen to you".



CSN -


Excuse me? She concludes, as did the radio host Tuesday morning, by insinuating that the men were terrorists, despite every shred of evidence, not to mention common sense, arguing to the contrary. And with that her article, and her credibility with it, plummets from merely sensationalist to inexcusably offensive.

Are you kidding? Maybe you weren't paying attention when she described the decidedly bizarre behaviour of these men on the plane? Or is that just spin in your book? Some sort of paranoid delusion that all arabs are out to get us? Get fukking real man. I bet before 9/11 you'd have scoffed at the idea of the attacks on the trade towers too. Like that's just some sort of paranoia as well?

I got some news for you guys, this isn't about whether your arab or even muslim. These are extremists, crazy people willing to do crazy things. Should they fukking check on people who get on an airplane, you bet your sweet ass. I'm ok with them doing background checks on specific nationalities that show up in large groups on flights, wanna know why? Because these crazy people come form a limited number of nations on this earth. I know, the horror of generalization.

Wat I find funny is everyone's screaming abotu our rights getting taken away and how the US is going down the toilet when it comes to human civil rights, yet these guys after observed as acting odd, and after the agencies onvolved are aware of dry runs going on on out airlines, still go free after all is said and done. how's that happen?

you guys have got to wake up. The worlds not even close to perfect and you can't get by on tears and kindness. Sometimes you have to put your foot down and take a hard line on these things. I'm not suggesting rounding up arabs in the US, but I am suggesting it sreasonable to track movements and to do background checks on muslims who board airplanes in large groups.

When I read the article I too thought of racial profiling, until she started noting the bizarre behaviour. She also has a good point, being musicians make a great cover, you want to make sure they are musicians you ask them to play their instruments. of course if you wanted to make sure the guys on the 9/11 flights were pilots.....

[red5angel]

lol, this thread just turned into some sort of bleeding heart retard party.
whites hating people - thats right MK, cause all white people hate all people who aren't. You should grow up, maybe stop hating so much.
I bet you shoot to "oppose" the man whenever possible ;)

[MasterKiller]

She freaked out because brown men were acting like the media has told her scary brown men will act.

Liberals in this country never did anything good....except write the Constitution.

[jun_erh]

Yeah it's totally baseless fear it's not like they have declared some kind of holy war against us or something.



"You will do what looks good to you on paper
We will do what we must"
-Fugazi

[KC Elbows]

Dudes, the ailrine said she overreacted. Read the snopes website, it has a quote by the airlines explaining that she overreacted, that the marshals felt as well, as did the crew, and that she endangered the flight by risking revealing the marshals in case there were actual terrorists.

Here's an exercise in simple logic.

Why would fourteen MUSICIANS(hint) congregate near the LAVATORY(hint) on a boring flight?

For bonus points, do they request an extra bag of peanuts before they each go to the lavatory or AFTER(hint)?

For those in need of further hints, let's change this a bit.

Myself, Chang Style Novice, African Tiger, Meat Shake, and Gene Ching are on a flight. We come on, acting as strangers, but quickly find each other, flashing a gesture, some sort of salute, where we hold our index and middle fingers together and hold them to our lips, whereupon the others would respond with the code phrase "Dude" or "Phat", depending whether they were part of the String Cheese Incident Cell or the Phish Cell.

Soon, each individual takes a turn in the lavatory, starting with the one who first made the salute, African Tiger in this case.

As we come out, passengers note that there is a smell from each of us that might be due to explosive components, provided by explosive components they mean "SKUNK"(hint).

At that point the five begin acting strangely and Ann Coulter gnaws her own torso free from her seatbelt, in abject fear for her life at the hands of the nefarious band and their Parliament Funk.

Really, the article has been debunked, and the author shown to be biased. Nothing more to say about that, really. That article does not support itself, much less anything others might say EXCEPT that yes, some people are scared of brown people to an irrational degree, like the author, whereas some people, like the airline and marshals in this case, are not.

[KC Elbows]

And I'm not at all joking about the musician thing, that was the first thing I thought of when I read the article.

In addition, the whole premise of terrorists posing as musicians and then hiring out gigs is pretty out there. In fact, it's stupid. It's a stupid, stupid idea. I can't reiterate that enough.

I HOPE the al queda is waiting on missions until their crack platoon of fussion jazz trios can arpeggiate.

BIN LAUDEN: Now, you are ready to kill!

SAXOPHONIST: Dude, I just totally jammed on the ionian, I didn't think that was even possible, nobody who's nobody in jazz dies on an airplane, that's so rockabilly.

BIN LAUDEN: Allah bids it so!

SAXOPHONIST: Dude, if Allah wanted a musician to die on a plane, would he have him live in Afghanistan, the country that supplies heroin to the world? Dude, I am so gonna hook up with a bad woman and ruin my life on horse, for the music.

BIN LAUDEN: God ****it! Someone get me my elite poet-bombs.

[KC Elbows]

I hope my last post captures how stupid the idea of actually training people to perform music as part of a terrorist conspiracy is. First off, training people to perform takes a while, and has no side benefit, as would training people to fly planes. If the mission is a no go, in one case, you have pilots, in the other, riff raff.:D

Second, Vegas has competition for performers, and whoever was paying to fly those people out was offering money, so some guys who started last year to learn an instrument probably aren't gonna cut it.

Finally, it's the most abjectly stupid thing ever said. I think we can all agree on that.

Wait! What if the terrorists are training people to refurbish furniture so that they can fly them out to a furniture refurbishing expo just happening to take place in WASHINGTON?!!! They'd have anthrax and dirty bombs hidden in the ottomans(get it, ottoman turks, the clever *******s even use swarthy sounding furniture), which, if the attack gets cancelled, they can then convert over to a nice art deco look at the expo.

Those clever *******s. They leave no angle untouched.

And yes, that is the second most abjectly stupid thing ever said, directly after the whole "terrorist jamboree" thing.

[David Jamieson]

Sure some canadians were killed in those attacks but Canada is going to sit idly by while america is attacked because "it could never happen to you".

way to minimize buddy. you get a fuscia star for that one!

one death...is one death too many. Your statement is indicative of your failure to grasp that.

But isn't it you who declared a jihad on me because I am anti bush?

Anyway... just saying, but I don't wanna argue the circle with the Coulter fans.

I am just thankful that Fox news is not allowed to broadcast up here. cnn is bad enough lol, but at least they waffle instead of sinking with the ship like Oreilly likes to do. hee hee.

[jun_erh]

You guys aren't even americans. who cares what your opinions are on our country and how we defend ourselves. Israel has had thousands die due to tons of suicide bombings. Go tell them they'
re paranoid. If muslims have a problem being "racially profiled" they can leave.

[MasterKiller]

You guys aren't even americans.
By "You guys," you mean Kung Lek, right? Because everyone else is planted firmly in American soil. And by "everyone else," I mean CSN, KC Elbows, and myself.


If muslims have a problem being "racially profiled" they can leave. Since when is "Muslim" a race?

[KC Elbows]

But the point is, according to the facts of the events as they appear to stand at this point, that woman's paranoia would have helped terrorists, not harmed them, and she was wrong according to law enforcement and the airlines. So, really, that article does not say anything useful, other than that she fears brown people, and that our law enforcement does not act out of fear. And that some people apparently buy the most abjectly stupid idea in all of creation, that there is an al queda death metal band bent on two things- shredding and death, which, if I hadn't mentioned it before, is the stupidest idea ever.

Essentially, the whole conspiracy theory combines the far far right's two greatest fears- brown people and music.

[jun_erh]

tell the sig hile to the muslims. With their relentless jew bashing and designs on world domination they are more like nazis. and wwhere was the article debunked?? You think just because some moron wrote an article for salon.com that that's the end of the story? If you guys where on the plane with that shoe bomber guy he would have been succesful because your too afraid of being politically incorrect to use common sense. It's not bigoted to jump out of the way of speeding train

[KC Elbows]

Originally posted by jun_erh
tell the sig hile to the muslims. With their relentless jew bashing and designs on world domination they are more like nazis. and wwhere was the article debunked??

The good folk at snopes.com have quotes from the airlines who are then quoting the air marshals and crew actually on that flight, who all seem to say that that woman was a paranoid freak who risked revealing marshals for no good reason. Mind you, they were nicer in their wording, but it was debunked. Rightly so, this thread can now turn to discussion of the dangers of paranoid people to create witch hunts, since the article has nothing to do with terrorists.

[KC Elbows]

Or, in fact, terrorist oboists, hereon shortened to terroboism, the use of an oboe to spread fear.

[David Jamieson]

well, that and tae bo and the west will definitely fall to the boist fundamentalists.

oboe, tae bo...coincidence? I think not and now dang it! I am certain that Billy Blanks is a nazi/commu/al qaeda/terror dancer musician...from mars, or saturn, whichever is most "de rigeur"

seriously though...I am not certain that pre-emptive attacks can be considered "defensive" Jun. :p

[David Jamieson]

oh, btw and for the record, Canada has planty o dudes on the ground and in country in Afghanistan in fact we sent another 600 yesterday...poor buggers.

As well, we have some of our finest policemen training up Iraqi policemen in Jordan.

And...well, I think it's just a tad weird that you would even think that the rest of the world shouldn't be concerned...particularly when ya gots a bunch of paranoia being marketed and the largest stockpile of nukes and chem weapons on the planet.

I just don't get the thinking behind the Coulter set sometimes... it's not even close to republicanism...I don't even know what it is. I guess fascism is pretty close to the mindset, but that's a dirty word to the far right.

Oh well, here's hoping a more moderate government takes the reigns down there in the fall.

And thank goodness for non-reactionary authority figures.

[jun_erh]

it turns out it was a false alarm. doesn't mean she shouldn't tell her story for fear of offending someone. She wrote an article about something that happened to her. Big deal.

[David Jamieson]

she wrote an inflammatory article in a time where that's the last thing we all need.

what we need is level heads, good intel and not a bunch of knee jerk fraidy pusses like ann jacobsen.

so it is a big deal, because she got a lot of press for that little wheedling and thank goodness the repercussions to her stupid actions were swift and authoritive.

[KC Elbows]

Originally posted by jun_erh
it turns out it was a false alarm. doesn't mean she shouldn't tell her story for fear of offending someone. She wrote an article about something that happened to her. Big deal.

She suggested that a number of people who weren't terrorists actually were. She stuck with this suggestion even after she knew they weren't, and published an article through which it wouldn't be hard to figure out what band this was, and the article, well after the event, ends with an allusion to those people, wha aren't terrorists, being alluded to as if they are.

In addition, she suggested that the plane was not helped by the heightened security the US has implemented when, in fact, according to the airline, she RISKED the integrity of that heightened security on that flight.

So, calling innocent people terrorists, bad, calling innocent people terrorists after you find out they are musicians, bad, calling innocent people terrorists after is is clear to everyone involved they aren't, bad, writing an article about it without consulting the airline adequately to find out the inside story, bad journalism, and risking revealing air marshals on board, bad for security.

The piece is dishonest, the lady is paranoid and demonstrably so at this point, and you're right, it's not a big deal, it's an irrelevant article that has nothing to do with the state of airport security or the nation, and anyone who thinks it is anything else are merely scared by it, not informed.

So, if you like falsely accusing, and publically, then it's an admirable piece. Otherwise, it's narrowminded tripe.

I do, however, find it odd that there even is a woman's wall street, and am curious if that means that the regular wall street has an adam's apple.

[jun_erh]

So you're saying people should be robots.

[rubthebuddha]

a frightened reaction is reasonable. if she's afraid of what could happen, that's natural. when she's told by authorities on the matter that she's nowhere near right, and continues her rantings, then she's off her rocker.

this isn't a black and white issue, jun. think harder before assuming so.

[Chief Fox]

I thought it was funny that the middle eastern men were speaking in arabic the whole time but in the final moments when they discovered that they needed to abort "the mission" the one guy wispered "no" in english. He probably wasn't saying something else.

Also, to address the point of fighting two guys in the aisle of a plane. The guy holding the box cutter knife had better look out because I have huge supply of carry on luggage that I can use for weapons just above my head.

[Banjos_dad]

Well, I figure those Syrian musicians, if they weren't on a "watch list" or whatever they call it...I bet they are now. So they were more victims than Ann(ie); that is one good point to take from this.

KL: One of the qualities of Canada I admire the most is the political neutrality. & I remember, only a few months ago, 6 of your guys were killed in Iraq by a roadside IED...I feel bad when non-American coalition "of the willing" soldiers die, the same as when our men & women die or suffer there.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

So...black people, hispanics, indians, asians aren't afraid of Al Qaeda, et al., then...Only whites, white conservatives...Afghans are OK with the Taliban then, I guess.

[CaptinPickAxe]

No wonder everyone gets nervous when I blow my herbs in the lavatory with my trusty guitar...they think I'm a terrorist.

[Banjos_dad]

Did you have to buy special "trick" socks? :D

I need to know...j/k.;)

How about Archports, haw haw! :eek:

[CaptinPickAxe]

white people are just too **** scurd...white people will fear white people next...theres no one else...WAIT...wait...albinos...
Fear the Albino...absence of pigment is the mark of satan.

[Banjos_dad]

Yeah, CPA. They're the scariest because we don't know how to categorize them...:eek:

Really just kidding.
No replies please from the North American Albino Congress.

[David Jamieson]

Johhny and Edgar Winter are their leaders!!!

They have sleeper cells of Al Bino located everywhere!!!

Whenever you hear the instrumental 'Frankenstein' glance about furtively, then write an article for womens wall street.

In no time, the lynching should commence.

[Banjos_dad]

Stop it!
Stop it!

(to stewardess): "I need to speak to the captain...o, and another Crown Royal sour, pleeze..."

Your scarin me now man. There's no telling who those al-binos really are...without seeing their skin color, there is no predicting which mode of attack they will choose.

(KL is more than perceptive enough to know I am just kidding).

"White 'powder'" (like the movie???) (groans)

[David Jamieson]

As an aside to all this chit chat of terror... and speaking of Als

Anyone catch Al Gores opening banter at the DNC this evening?

Who said he wasn't a funny guy? He had some great one liners...

anyway...

[KC Elbows]

I thought a real long time before posting this.

But I have to share something that happened to me.

I was surfing the net, when I came on this one article, and I read it, it started out all right, it was written by a woman, and she was writing, and as she wrote, she started to get upset about musicians, and I know that stripper cokehead girlfriends get upset about their musician boyfriends, so I'm worried that she's gonna like freak out and cut people with her little cocaine manipulating razor blade in some crazy "my musician boyfriend just used me for anal then slept with a groupie named Pam" kinda way, so I'm backing away, and then she basically says that these muslim musicians are terrorists, and I know what's happening, the band got sick of her snorting all their blow for sexual favors, and I finish the article and read that she's just some writer, but I've known stripper chicks into sexual favors for blow who knew how to write, you do the math.