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Another Plane Down in New York
Another plane has crashed, this time in Queens. You can read a blurb at Yahoo.
CNN.com isn't responding for me. LaGuardia, Newark and JFK are closed now. Update: 11/12 14:54 GMT by T : New reports indicate that the plane was departing from JFK, not arriving. Also, CNN has confirmed that this was American Airlines flight 587, an Airbus A 300. Update: 11/12 14:57 GMT by T : Further information is that the plane was en route to the Dominican Republic, and that the disaster actually involves two crash sites, not just one -- an engine fell from the plane some distance from the fuselage.
Just to let you all know - as off press time for this posting, nobody knows whether this was an accident, or another terrorist attack.
Let's not jump to conclusions.
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Everyone knows what everyone is thinking at this moment, possible cause for the accident.
They have the public scared, even if this had nothing to do with terrorism, more people will be afraid.
Step 1: Take 3 deep breaths.
Step 2: Find out if it was terror or something else entirely.
Step 3: Take deliberate and appropriate action.
Moderators, please mod knee jerk posts accordingly...
mh
As bad as this sounds, I hope it's just that the plane and mechanical problems.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
CBC
This was flight 587, headed to the Dominican Republic.
-Waldo Jaquith
According to ABC News (I got a little bit of the vieo blurb before it totally crapped out on me)
eyewitnesses are reprting that an angine exploded on the approach to JFK, and that several buildings are on fire.
My Girlfriends family lives in queens, as does the family of someu very close friends of mine . . . . here's to hoping they're all okay.
----
One of us needs to stick ones' head in a bucket of ice water.
- Hobbes
They do go down by themselves now and then after all... .. the seventh one down in the last few months..
But this is what
it's an airbus A-300 jet, according to MSNBC. or it's a flying saucer, according to Fox News ... :)
---
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
all they said is
An American Airlines 767 has crashed in the Queens borough of New York City. Port Authority officials say the plane was bound for JFK airport. Thick black smoke was billowing over the area, and local media reported several houses on fire. FULL STORY SOON
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
sorry here http://www.skynews.co.uk/skynews/storytemplate/sto rytoppic/0,,30000-1035003,00.html
Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You - ONLY HARDER!
The greatest terrorist attack on the US happened just two months ago and you have the gall to be discussing "Another Plane down in New York"?
GET SOME PRIORITIES!!
Almost exactly 2 months after, they would probably not choose 11 Nov as it would be a Sunday.
/.'ed.
Not sure about the Target though, perhaps the passengers reacted.
This is going to cripple the airline industry further.
There still is a chance it could have been an accident.
My thoughts go with all.
All the news sites are pretty much
Any word yet on whether it's terrorist related or not?
Their coverage is here.
Common sense is a set of prejudices built up over a lifetime
CNN just said that it was an Airbus 300 that nosedived into Queens. At least 4 homes are on fire.
No word on cause.
~=Keelor
According to radio reports, witnesses on the ground reported that an engine exploded prior to the crash. The plane was on approach to one on the NY airports and therfore not fully fueled as in the last set of attacks. Repoets state that four building are on fire.
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
As opposed to being "rerouted", like before.
Now they're saying it was actually headed to Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic)...
I was thinking of going across the office area I'm in to check out CNN but I thought twice, I have better things to do, although there's no word yet I'm betting this has nothing to do with "terrorist" attacks, just another plane crash? If you want to call plane crashes routine.... I'm sure (ok, I hope) this is just a non-event that the media will be all over, news at eleven.
NPR is saying it might be a Airbus A3 - there is not as of yet confirmation from the airline that owned the plane.
It is quite simple
Haiku should not be funny
Try a Senryu
was not inbound... bound for dominican republic.. AA flight #587 Airbus a300..
PLANE CRASHES IN QUEENS, NEW YORK
NEW YORK (AP) . A plane crashed Monday morning in the Queens section of New York, and buildings reportedly were on fire in the neighborhood.
The plane crashed shortly after 9 a.m. and thick, black smoke could be seen in televised reports.
The type of plane and number of people aboard were not immediately known. CNN reported that American Airlines confirmed the plane was an inbound American Airlines Boeing 767. The airline told The Associated Press it had no immediate comment.
11-12-01 0940EST
Foxnews is reporting that it was an Airbus 300 that crashed after take off.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Queens police confirm an aircraft crashed Monday in the Far Rockaways neighborhood of the New York City borough.
The spokesman could not confirm the type of plane but said it crashed in the Rockaways at 122nd Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard.
WCBS-TV reported that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it was an American Airlines 767 presumably on approach to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The station showed pictures of a huge plume of smoke.
Nope, now it's an Airbus.
Don't ay any attention to anything until the end of the day on something like this. No one really knows anything, and the newspeople need to have something to say...
NYTIMES.com is up and has an AP article on the crash, foxnews is also unreachable.
CNN has just announced that the plane that crashed was an Airbus A300 AA headed to the Dominican Reublic from JFK.
It's from Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. You may have heard of him.
Buildings burning.
p &a ddr=&city=Rockaway+Park&state=NY&slt=40.580000&sln =-73.836700&mlt=40.578000&mln=-73.844100&zip=&coun try=us&mag=9&cs=7&BFClient=&BFKey=&poi=&poititle=& map.x=107&map.y=204
Yahoo map of impact zone
http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?BFCat=&Pyt=Tma
New 24
Robots.cnn.com is a load balancing mirror for CNN. How long till they go barebones again?
Current headline:
An American Airlines plane has crashed in the Queens borough of New York City. The FAA identifies the flight as American flight 587, an Airbus A300 from JFK airport to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Thick smoke was billowing over the area, and local media reported several houses on fire.
This time it is even closer to where my dad works. Not even a mile away. Scares the shit out of me.
"He who laughs last is usually the dumbest kid on the block." - John Lennon
If this is indeed another hijacking brought down by passengers, the hijackers are demonstrating the type enginuity and resolve that the House lacks in getting the damn airline security bill passed.
If it's an accident...?
Imagine what this is going to do to Thanksgiving Holiday air traffic. Also, in the face of Am-Trak being asked to consider it's assets for liquidation. The irony.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
They now know that it was an Airbus A-300 not a 767. It was taking off and heading for the Dominiqin Republic. It appears to have happened very shortly after take-off with no prior warning. Got this all from MSNBC
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
The BBC news site is still responding, albeit slowly. news.bbc.co.uk Escoutaire When a dream dreams the dreamer, the dreams the real.
When a dream dreams the dreamer, the dreams the real.
An American Airlines flight on its way to John F Kennedy airport has crashed in New York.
At least four buildings in the Rockaway Beach area of the city's borough of Queens are on fire.
It is not known why the aircraft crashed or how many people were on board, or in the buildings now ablaze.
New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani is on his way to the crash site and has called a level one alert.
There is no indication at the moment that the crash is anything other than an accident.
The weather was crystal clear when the plane - thought to be a Boeing 767 - went down.
Both towers of the World Trade Center in New York were destroyed on 11 September after 767s were flown into them.
All three airports serving New York - JFK, Newark and La Guardia - are now closed.
The Dow index dropped 200 points on hearing the news.
A co-worker of mine just told me that he heard on the radio that eyewittnesses reported seeing one of the engines exploding.
... but I hope it was just a mechanical failure.
I don't mean this to be crass
mr
For example: Canada's Globe & Mail
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
It's not a 767, it was an Airbus A-300...
Would be looking like this...
http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=191200
American Flight 587 out of JFK to the Dominican Republic down in Queens :( Good luck to everyone.
Realities just a bunch of bits.
Winning the land battle in Afghanistan does nothing to make us safer
Not to open a can of worm here, but neither does doing nothing. I'd rather go after the guy who did it than not.
Yeah, from the sketchy reports so far, it doesn't look much like a terrorist hijacking.
This plane was apparently inbound to JFK, 5 miles out. Previous hijackings were departing west coast-bound jets.
ABC radio is saying this was an Airbus, not a Boeing.
As usual, this soon afterwards it is a lot of rumor, speculation and semi-reliable live news broadcast reports.
From the initial information, which is quite sparse, this doesn't follow the pattern of the earlier terrorist attacks. If it crashed while it was comming in for a landing, it would do much less damage, because I assume it would have much less fuel. Also, if you have control of an airplane, why not ram it into a tall building instead of some houses?
Of course we know so little at this point, speculating seems pointless..
http://robots.cnn.com/2001/US/11/12/newyork.crash/ index.html
There's a direct URL, load balancing.
The earlier news today was that the northern alliance forces are only hours away from arriving at the capital Kabul.
So I wonder if there is a connection.
NEW YORK -- An American Airlines Airbus A300 crashed Monday morning in the Queens section of New York, and buildings reportedly were on fire in the neighborhood. The plane crashed shortly after 9 a.m. and thick, black smoke could be seen miles away. All metro area airports were closed following the crash, in the Rockaways section of Queens. The mayor canceled his morning events and headed to the scene. One eyewitness reported debris falling from sky, and told the Fox News Channel four homes were on fire. Another told CNN he was 40 blocks away and saw "Just a lot of smoke. Tons and tons of smoke. You can see emergency vehicles heading to area. Lots of people are standing in the streets. It's very tense." The cause of the crash was not immediately known. The crash came two months after the attack on the World Trade Center, which was destroyed by two Boeing 767s hijacked out of Boston's Logan Airport. One of the planes was operated by American, the other by United.
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
Did every news site return all the extra servers and bandwidth they acquired during the 9/11 attack? Suddenly I can't get to cnn, yahoo news, and many other sites. What happened to their extra capacity?
creation science book
According to the radio, the Am. Airlines plane was *departing* JFK, and had only been in the air for two minutes before crashing. With reports of the engine exploding, it sounds like a bomb or engine failure as opposed to a hijacking.
- Demosthenes
nevermind, the newscaster was confused...it was FLIGHT 587 which was a 767...not two different planes. My bad. Sorry...i was just trying to give some info....the news made a mistake and I unfortunately believed them.
The anti-salmon
There is live on-line news coverage of the plane crash already at ABCNews.
First people hear the initial incorrect reports (incoming flight, 767), then other people post more up to date information. Then the first wave berates the second wave for not having the correct info. Then they just look stupid for getting knee-jerk news reports anyhow.
Slow down, don't post so damn quick.
Now I'm watching ABC, and it sounds like it's actually an Airbus, and the plane was actually taking off. Hence the huge amounts of smoke.
Looks like an accident. There's a lady on the phone who saw it happen, said the plane just started taking off, and then plummeted.
"Peace, Love and Apathy"
NEW YORK, Nov. 12 -- At least four homes were ablaze Monday after an American Airlines 767 aircraft crashed near the heavily populated Rockaway Beach area of New York City, not far from John F. Kennedy International Airport, NBC News reported on Monday. The Airbus-300, Flight 587, was heading to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.
DETAILS WERE sketchy although cameras in Manhattan showed a thick plume of smoke billowing high above Queens.
The local NBC affiliate, WNBC, reported that the crash occurred in the Bel Harbor section of the Rockaways at around 9:15 a.m. ET.
JFK and La Guardia Airport, which is also based in Queens, were shut after the accident.
An eyewitness told WNBC that he saw a wing of the plane on fire after takeoff from JFK.
Fox News just reported it as being a American Airlines' Airbus Leaving JFK to the Dominican Republic.
Ah, the last peanut -- overflowing with the oil and salt of its departed brothers. -Homer
I can hear the phone lines ringing off the hook with the scared masses canceling thier thanksgiving flights. If it was an accident, then it just dealt another major blow to our emotions and economy.
Pray for the familes of yet another downed flight.
This Story at the BBC is up and down like a YoYo.
BBC Radio 1 is reporting nothing at present - actually playing 'heaven is a halfpipe'!
http://www.msnbc.com/m/lv/default.asp?0cv=c642
"Recta non toleranda futuaris nisi irrisus ridebis"
Since the CNN site is getting hammered (Don't they ever learn?) Here's the text:
American Airlines jet crashes in New York
November 12, 2001 Posted: 9:54 AM EST (1454 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- An American Airlines jet crashed Monday in the New York City borough of Queens.
CNN confirmed the plane was American Airlines Flight 587 from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The plane was an Airbus A-300. American Airlines did not immediately release the number of passengers on the flight.
A New York police spokesman said the plane crashed in the Rockaways section of Queens. At least four houses were on fire, and a huge plume of smoke could be seen rising from the site.
All three New York City-area airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark -- closed after the crash, according to CNN affiliate WCBS in New York. Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared a Level One emergency, mobilizing all available police, fire and emergency personnel.
Trying to bring up the story on New York Times I get an Orbitz pop-under ad. Story probably requires the free registration.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
For those that don't live in NYC there is a map of queens here
FYI: Far rockaways are very near JFK.
According to this article, it was an A300 bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic from JFK. It crashed shortly after take off, thus hitting a few houses and catching them on fire.
DevPlanet.org
Plane crash in NYC
An American Airlines plane has crashed in the Queens borough of New York City. The FAA identifies the flight as American flight 587, an Airbus A300 from JFK airport to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Thick smoke was billowing over the area, and local media reported several houses on fire.
http://kered.org
to reply to my own post, CNN has a different report now:
s h/ index.html
CNN confirmed the plane was American Airlines Flight 587 from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The plane was an Airbus A-300. American Airlines did not immediately release the number of passengers on the flight.
http://robots.cnn.com/2001/US/11/12/newyork.cra
http://europe.cnn.com/2001/US/11/12/newyork.crash/ index.html
I believe that unless they do something about minimum wage, lowest bidder security, that this will be the norm.
Get used to it.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
It was an A300 heading to the Dominican Republic.
"The plane reportedly crashed near Beach 129th Street and Newport Avenue, in the Rockaways section of Queens."
:/
Hope everyone's OK
"My days are less enjoyable because of people." ~ Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
I'm watching this on TV right now (cnn.com still not responding). Some of the initial details have changed:
/leaving/ JFK for Dominican Rep.
- Not a 767, an Airbus A-300 (seats around 300 people)
- It was American Airlines flight 587;
- The crash site is a residential/shopping area (Rockaway Beach Blvd.)
- FAA issued an advisory saying that there is no indication (yet) of a terrorist attack.
- Bridges and tunnels in NYC have been closed.
------
--- I shall always be wherever I've been. - Winston Niles Rumfoord
You can get live streaming video from BBC Live in QuickTime.
Almost no packet loss... for now...
- Benad
The Yahoo blurb reads out:
The plane crashed shortly after 9 a.m. and thick, black smoke could be scene in televised reports.
Even I make spelling errors, but I think this kind of news should be thoughtfully brought to the public, rather than quickly jotted down.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Queens police confirm an aircraft crashed Monday in the Far Rockaways neighborhood of the New York City borough.
The spokesman could not confirm the type of plane but said it crashed in the Rockaways at 122nd Street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard.
WCBS-TV reported that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it was an American Airlines 767 presumably on approach to John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. The station showed pictures of a huge plume of smoke.
karma already @ 50 - not trying to be a whore so relax...
http://kered.org
BBC news site report doesn't add much:
Details are sketchy, but WNYC (back online!) reports at least 4 buildings on fire, and some concern that there is a gasoline station in the vicinity. Crashsite is an suburban neighborhood, homes, schools, etc. Capacity of the plane is 285 souls.
A friend of mine just said "Isn't is horrible that we can now think 'I hope it was just a plane crash' when something like this happens?"
From the location of the crash and proximity to the airport it looks like it might have just been an accident. If not, then it is yet another nail in the terrorist's coffins.
If you recall what happened 9/11, the same thing happened over and over again, and we got reports that a plane may have hit the capitol building, the white house, the washington monument (ouch), and the moon.
Best to take a completely objectivist look at this before rushing to conclusions.
It is not an inbound flight, but rather an outbound to the Dominican Republic. An eye witness describes the explosion where the wing meets the body of the plane, the armpit where the wing meets. The explosion does not seem to appear in or by the engine. Please standby for more information.
Prayer: Please, GOD, please don't let this be another one.
" Airplane crash == terrorist attack"
Excuse me but that is just plain bullshit.
It is actually quite normal for planes to crash every now and then, therefore it is most likely to be an accident.
However, through your statement all you are doing is spreading fear. Simply by doing that you are *helping* terrorists, as spreading fear is (by definition) their main objective.
Stay cool. The chance of getting hit by a terrorist attack is smaller than the chance of getting hit by a 4WD because the driver was so afraid of being hit by a terrorist that he/she was not paying attention.
That's the one thing I really dislike about this whole thing. Anyone who says something even vaguely against the war effort is accused of advocating pacifism and letting terrorists walk all over us. There are other ways, people!
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
This is yet again proof of why chat groups, bulletin boards and internet newsgroups are useless as a "breaking story" news source. It's been less than 45 minutes since the crash and already people are posting "facts" that were proven wrong minutes later or are providing mindless speculation. I'll grant you that CNN isn't much better in the first hour of any major story, but at least on TV the incorrect data doesn't stick around for days after the truth is known.
What you've said so far: It was a 767. It was inbound to NY. It crashed downtown. It might have been terrorists.
What CNN is saying as of a minute ago: It was an Airbus A300. It was leaving NY on an international flight. It crashed 10 miles from the airport, out in Rockaway (Long Island).
Let's leave the journalism to the journalists, shall we?
An American Airlines Jet, probably an Airbus, was headed to the Dominican Republic and ran into some kind of trouble after takeoff. It tried to return to the airport, but could not make. Maybe an engine exploded or was on fire. FAA does NOT believe it was a terroist attack or any kind of hijacking.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. -- William James
Given that neither reaction nor inaction will prevent further attacks, which is the better course to take? Consider these points:
- Which course will polarise world opinion, leading previously moderate people to support radical organisations? (Clue: look at Pakistan.)
- Which course will kill innocent people abroad, in addition to those who have already died in the US? (Clue: look at Afghanistan.)
- Which course will perpetuate a cycle of violence and be used to justify further attacks? (Clue: look at the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine.)
Is your desire to feel like you're doing something worth the consequences?Summary:
American airlines Airbus A300.
Flying from JFK to the dominican republic
Between 5-10 miles out of JFK, over Queens
At least 4 buildings on fire.
All 3 airports in NY now closed.
No news on accident/terrorist
DWR is Ajax for Java
Well, maybe it would be safer not to fly, but this seems to have crashed in or near apartments, so if you had stayed home late this morning, well, work might have been a safer place today. I guess it's time to buy an old copper mine somewhere.
You guys are up no matter what... thanks for some consise info.
For you europeans out there, sky.co.uk is MIA now, as is the BBC's site.
Good luck getting info... maybe try IRC.openprojects.org #worldtradecenter. That's where I am.
-spool32
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
You shouldn't report news on slashdot because 1) that's not the purpose and 2) you often get it wrong and spread misinformation.
You can argue that the news sites are down, but that's better than spreading misinformation.
the plane ...
linky linky"
Runnin' On Empty
CNN may be down but the Washington Post is up and has a photo.
Abcnews.go.com appears to be down.
MSNBC is up with coverage.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
Notice that this time the newssites was _very_ quick on going to a light version of their pages.
They have obviously learned from prior experiences.
Dow Jones however dropped 200 points faster than any newssite could update their pages. Consider the impact on US-airtraffic.
Wonder how much time it will take until someone goes bankrupt and wether it will be a US or some other national agency that drops first.
Rangle
It's Shakespeare.
Julius Ceasar Act III Scene i:
"Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial."
It is Athony's speech after Ceasar is killed. As you can see in the rest of the phrase it is about revenge for a "foul deed."
http://www.chicagotribune.com works
http://www.latimes.com works
if you have IE (yeah, I know) you can get the BBC News coverage - this stayed up all 11/9 for me, and I'm listening to it now....
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
No take a look at
I'd be thankful if somebody could explain that to me 'cos it sounds so strange to me! (note: I don't have a clue about the whole topic)
0 001 11 1
Why do so many people seem to think that not attacking Afghanistan means "doing nothing"?
We have alot of options besides engaging in inapropriate military action.
Why inapropriate? Donald Rumsfeld said that we're unlikely to catch Bin Laden. Many members of the Taliban are no longer in the Taliban and will never be caught. Besides all of these peopl already invaded Afghanistan. Neither Bin Laden nor the Taliban are Afghani. We are bombing innocent civilians who happened to have the misfortune of being invaded by people who attacked the US as well.
So: the news sources are confusing (natural phenomenon in crises). do we have
a boeing 767 OR an airbus 300 crashing (previous posts)
or
a boeing 767 AND an airbus 300 crashing (I would conclude that from your post)
American Airlines reports that it was flight 587, an Airbus 300 that was outbound from JFK to the Dominican Republic, and it crashed about 2 minutes after takeoff© There were 247 passengers and 9 crewmembers©
From what I've heard it crashed in the Rockaways at 122nd street and Rockaway Beach Boulevard©
The FAA is saying that there is no indication of terrorism right now©
The Queens/Midtown tunns are closed, Lincoln outbound is closed until further notice©
Also, JFK, LaGuardia and Newark airports are closed©
--
Mike Nugent
Programmer/Author
http://www©illuminatus©org
-- Mike wildcard@illuminatus.org
New York Times, 7:03, 11/12/01:
November 12, 2001
Homes in Queens on Fire
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
EW YORK -- An American Airlines Airbus A300 crashed Monday morning in the Queens section of New York, and buildings reportedly were on fire in the neighborhood.
The plane crashed shortly after 9 a.m. and thick, black smoke could be seen miles away.
All metro area airports were closed following the crash, in the Rockaways section of Queens.
The mayor canceled his morning events and headed to the scene.
One eyewitness reported debris falling from sky, and told the Fox News Channel four homes were on fire.
Another told CNN he was 40 blocks away and saw "Just a lot of smoke. Tons and tons of smoke. You can see emergency vehicles heading to area. Lots of people are standing in the streets. It's very tense."
The cause of the crash was not immediately known.
The crash came two months after the attack on the World Trade Center, which was destroyed by two Boeing 767s hijacked out of Boston's Logan Airport. One of the planes was operated by American, the other by United.
An explanation of how the U.S. got into this mess: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
The problem is that simply firing a few billion $ worth of ammunition into the Afghan wastelands does not only accomplish nothing, it actually worsens the situation by driving even more desperate people into the hands of the terrorist groups.
Unless we start caring about the causes (Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq etc.) and not simply about the symptoms, we can already mark January 11.
And if this crash wasn't a terrorist attack, but a simple accident, it changes nothing about the underlying facts.
What you don't understand is that bombing Afghanistan only creates more kamikazes.
Just take a real story: Kabul, "normal" family with a mother, a father and 6 children. An US bomb miss (?) its millitary target and destroy their house. The father and 5 children die. The mother lose her mind. The surviving child is 5 years old. All his life, he'll remember his father, brothers and sisters killed by US army. If in 15 years he becomes a terrorist and make a plane crash in NY, you'll know why. Drama like that happen every day in Afghanistan since US start bombing. Each of them create potential kamikazes.
Hatred create hatred. Violence leads to violence. You can't destroy terrorism with bombs. By killing Afghans you just increase the anti-US hatred in those countries, you give strength to Bin Laden and his friends.
They also said that the firefighters on the scene are the exact same ones that were at the WTC just over two months ago.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
[sorry for bothering you here, couldn't figure it out by myself].
non-english speaker, so knee jerk makes little sense to me.
thanks
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
NBC is reporting that 246 people were ticketed for this flight along with 9 crewmembers. No telling how many people were in the vicinity on the ground, I imagine this part of the Queens is quite densely populated.
Please cut and paste articles since the websites will die one after the other. Thnx.
Does anyone have a videostream on a line that can take the slashdot effect? Would be nice for us without Cable/American TV.
9-11, 11-12, so what's the pool for the next one?
1-14? 2-13? Taking bets...
Wait, is that sick?
Normalcy returns!
KM
Kinda like Moe, but just a little more Kool
I'm not sure which way I jump on this issue (honestly), so I'm only presenting options here. However...
Large quantities of the Muslim world are currently convinced that the USA and UK are out to destroy Islam and are just using this as a pretext. So, by attacking Afghanistan, we're currently providing a motivation for them to join organisations like al Quaeda (sp?) and increasing the available pool of terrorists. As a direct consequence of our attacking them, it's easier for them to attack us. Had we not attacked them (whether you believe it's justified retaliation or not), they'd have a smaller volunteer pool.
I have no sympathy with terrorism but I can see why people might be motivated this way.
BTW, there's also the other question of whether the current campaign can ever achieve its aims, even if they're clearly defined. I can't see that it can achieve what people want it to, or that the aims are nailed down particularly tightly...
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Quote from CNN: "The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said the plane was carrying 246 passengers and nine crew members. "
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
November 12, 2001 Posted: 10:06 AM EST (1506 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- An American Airlines jet with 255 people on board crashed Monday on takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The plane went down at 9:17 a.m. EST in the Rockways section of the New York City borough of Queens, about five miles from Kennedy Airport.
CNN confirmed the plane was American Airlines Flight 587 from New York to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The plane was a Boeing Airbus A300. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said the plane was carrying 246 passengers and nine crew members.
Asked if terrorism was suspected, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Bill Schumann said, "All options are open at this time. We have very limited information."
The Pentagon said surveillance fights were going on in the area and nothing unusual had been spotted.
At least four houses were on fire, and a huge plume of smoke could be seen rising from the site. The New York Fire Department dispatched 44 firetrucks and 200 firefighters to the scene.
All three New York City-area airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark -- closed after the crash, along with all the city's bridges and tunnels. Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared a Level One emergency, mobilizing all available police, fire and emergency personnel.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- An American Airlines jet with 255 people on board crashed Monday on takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The plane went down at 9:17 a.m. EST in the Rockways section of the New York City borough of Queens, about five miles from Kennedy Airport.
CNN confirmed the plane was American Airlines Flight 587 from New York to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The plane was a Boeing Airbus A300. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said the plane was carrying 246 passengers and nine crew members.
Asked if terrorism was suspected, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Bill Schumann said, "All options are open at this time. We have very limited information."
The Pentagon said surveillance fights were going on in the area and nothing unusual had been spotted.
At least four houses were on fire, and a huge plume of smoke could be seen rising from the site. The New York Fire Department dispatched 44 firetrucks and 200 firefighters to the scene.
All three New York City-area airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark -- closed after the crash, along with all the city's bridges and tunnels. Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared a Level One emergency, mobilizing all available police, fire and emergency personnel.
* American Airlines flight crashes on takeoff in NYC borough of Queens
* FAA: American Flight 587 -- Airbus A300 -- from JFK airport to Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic
* NYC Port Authority: 246 passengers, 9 crew
* All NYC area airports closed, bridges and tunnels leading into city closed
* Affiliate WCBS reports at least 4 buildings on fire
* New York Fire Department dispatches 44 trucks, 200 firefighters
American Airlines jet crashes in New York
November 12, 2001 Posted: 10:06 AM EST (1506 GMT)
Smoke rises Monday morning from the crash site in Queens, New York.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- An American Airlines jet with 255 people on board crashed Monday on takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The plane went down at 9:17 a.m. EST in the Rockways section of the New York City borough of Queens, about five miles from Kennedy Airport.
CNN confirmed the plane was American Airlines Flight 587 from New York to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The plane was a Boeing Airbus A300. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said the plane was carrying 246 passengers and nine crew members.
Asked if terrorism was suspected, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Bill Schumann said, "All options are open at this time. We have very limited information."
The Pentagon said surveillance fights were going on in the area and nothing unusual had been spotted.
At least four houses were on fire, and a huge plume of smoke could be seen rising from the site. The New York Fire Department dispatched 44 firetrucks and 200 firefighters to the scene.
All three New York City-area airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark -- closed after the crash, along with all the city's bridges and tunnels. Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared a Level One emergency, mobilizing all available police, fire and emergency personnel.
karma already @ 50 - not trying to be a whore here so don't worry...
http://kered.org
246 Passengers 9 Crew on board the flight.
As always, I'm puzzled at the speed of which news like this spreads.
Tragic as it is, I am somewhat intrigued by the how big news like this spreads on the internet - 10 years ago I would have learned about something like the wtc-incident in the local news the day after or on the national television. Now i heard about the crash 5 minutes after it happened, and then we learned about everything through irc and the heavily dos'ed newssites almost realtime as it happened.
Also, i see that there are tons of rumours, like the comments to this article shows, there are enormous amounts of hearsay and false newsitems, making it more important than ever before to filter out the 'real' stuff.
How do you all experience the internet as used to spread information on topics like this?
My symphaties to those involved in this latter (hopefully) accident.
American jetliner crashes
November 12, 2001: 9:40 a.m. ET
Crash of Airbus leaving New York's JFK airport is first crash since Sept. 11.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300 jetliner, crashed near New York's Kennedy International Airport just after 9 a.m. Monday as it was leaving JFK for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, according to the FAA.
Details of the crash, including cause or the condition of people on the plane and the ground, were not immediately available. At least four buildings were reported on fire.
A large cloud of thick black smoke was visible from miles away following the crash. Local news broadcasters in New York were quoting witnesses as saying there was an explosion on the plane before the crash.
The crash, which occurred in the Rockaways section of Queens at 122nd and Rockaway Beach Blvd, is the first involving a U.S. airliner since the Sept. 11 terrorist attack that brought down four jets. That attack prompted a shutdown in the nation's air traffic system and sharply decreased demand for air travel by the public.
American Airlines officials had no immediate comment.
All three New York area airports - JFK, LaGuardia and Newark - were closed following the crash as were all New York City area bridges and tunnels.
So, I'm about to leave the office en-route to Heathrow for a flight to JFK in a few hours time - would you fly? (that's assuming that the flight will be going ahead, which it may not..)
Serious question folks..
Q.
CNN now reporting:
DEVELOPING STORY
U.S. Air Force officials tell CNN that fighter jets were airborne over New York at time of crash.
It may not be a "real" news site, But it doesn't crash like CNN/MSNBC....
/. props just for the fact it tells us atleast something when we have no other access.
./!
The info may not be the most accurate for the first 15-20 minutes...but eventually the real info starts emerging once people start coming together.
I give
Thanks,
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
Several European national carriers are bankrput or on the edge of it.
Whatever happened to JonKatz?
12 Buildings on fire now.
- sigs are for wimps.
Thank you, and God bless America.
Anyone who says something even vaguely against the war effort is accused of advocating pacifism and letting terrorists walk all over us.
Talk about putting words in mouth... The post said that bombing Afghanistan didn't make us safe. Well, duh.. I don't think anyone thought that bombing afghanistan made us safe. That's comparing apples to oranges. Looking at airport security might make us safer... bombing Afghanistan might produce the number one suspect.
To paraphrase... Anyone who says something even vaguely for getting bin Laden is accused of advocating war mongering.
this could quite possibly be because we're dealing with such sensitive information -- no one wants to create a state of panic.
For those having problems connecting to CNN.com, just a hint. asia.cnn.com. Its what us Australians are suppost to look at, even though it isn't hosted in Australia (its in the same place as www.cnn.com), except the only difference is it seems to be responding and able to handle traffic. And yes, that page lists all the world storys.
Lets wait until we know the true cause before we start forming lynch-mobs, shall we?
This crash reminds me a bit of a crash that happened years ago in Amsterdam, when an engine fell from a 747 cargo plane after take-off. The plane then tried to return to the field, but crashed in a flat because the broken off engine also caused major damage to the hydrolics system. There should be plenty voice comunication here between tower and plane for some information.
The only thing odd, is that it was an Airbus A300, not a Boeing A300(as stated on the CNN website). Airbuses don't have a perfect track record, but as far as i know, nothing with engines falling off. (it seems the NTSB database is even slashdotted now). But an A300 isn't exactly state of the art anymore.
Time wil tell.
what is a level one emergency? Is that a bigger or smaller emergency than level two? Anyone know about this sort of thing?
After all, if nobody thinks that this could be terrorism, why is every NYC area airport closed? JFK, LGA and EWR are all fully operational at the moment, but have been forced to close. That is not standard procedure. Or at least it wasn't before 11 Sep 2001.
According to www.annanova.com, the FAA has ruled out terrorism as a cause of the crash.
There is probably a greater connection to this story out of Nepal then the stories comming out of Afganistan. At least for the former story they both involved planes and crashes of planes. The connection is therefor obvious.
Eyewitness reports on BBC Radio 5 report hearing an explosion before it went down and claim fighters alongside plane before crashing.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- An American Airlines jet with 255 people on board crashed Monday on takeoff from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. The plane went down at 9:17 a.m. EST in the Rockways section of the New York City borough of Queens, about five miles from Kennedy Airport. CNN confirmed the plane was American Airlines Flight 587 from New York to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. The plane was a Boeing Airbus A300. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said the plane was carrying 246 passengers and nine crew members. Asked if terrorism was suspected, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Bill Schumann said, "All options are open at this time. We have very limited information." The Pentagon said surveillance fights were going on in the area and nothing unusual had been spotted. At least four houses were on fire, and a huge plume of smoke could be seen rising from the site. The New York Fire Department dispatched 44 firetrucks and 200 firefighters to the scene. All three New York City-area airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark -- closed after the crash, along with all the city's bridges and tunnels. Mayor Rudy Giuliani declared a Level One emergency, mobilizing all available police, fire and emergency personnel.
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
He's talking about Canada, even if they aren't the cause of the crash, we still need to nuke them.
Hammer of Truth
CNN's European site is working fine.
From a local TV station's site -- often a good secondary source of info when the big boys get overwhelmed.
t ai l.html
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/1069613/de
American Airlines Plane Crashes In New York
Four Homes On Fire
POSTED: 9:30 a.m. EST November 12, 2001
UPDATED: 10:13 a.m. EST November 12, 2001
NEW YORK -- An American Airlines Airbus A300 crashed Monday morning in the Queens section of New York, and four homes reportedly were on fire in the neighborhood in the Rockaway section of Queens.
The plane crashed shortly after 9 a.m. ET, and thick, black smoke could be scene in televised reports. It was reportedly headed to JFK, but the origin of the flight was undetermined.
Bill Schumann of the Federal Aviation Administration said there was no immediate indication of what caused the crash. He said the plane could hold up to 275 passengers, and crashed about five miles from Kennedy Airport. There were 246 passengers and 9 crewmembers aboard the flight, according to CNN.
Asked if terrorism is suspected, Schumann said that all options are open at the time and they have very little information. Defense officials said that while combat jets were flying over the sky as is routine, there were not any reports of suspicious activity or distress calls.
Television images show thick black smoke rising from the scene. The smoke was seen turning white, which could indicate that the flames were being put out.
Fox News Channel reports it was an American Airlines flight 587. All three New York City airports were closed to air travel. They include LaGuardia, JFK and Newark airports.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has canceled his morning events and is heading to the scene.
FAA said American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300, crashed. It was on its way to Santo Domingo Dominican Republic. CNN reported that the engine came down separate from the rest of the jetliner and that Giuliani confirmed that there are two separate crash sites. A witness said he saw an explosion on the side of the plane.
It was a "level 1" emergency, which means all emergency personnel are advised to go to the crash scene. All the major tunnels heading into New York have been closed.
Reports have varied throughout the morning. The FAA said there seems to be no indication of a terrorist attack.
A witness said he saw debris falling from the sky, at the scene of today's plane crash.
He told the Fox News Channel that four homes are on fire.
Another man told CNN that he was 40 blocks away, and saw "tons and tons of smoke." He said, "Lots of people are standing in the streets.
A woman who lives near the scene of the crash said she heard the engines of a plane -- "loud and low" -- before the crash.
Phyllis Paul told CNN she looked out the window to see a "silvery piece of metal" falling from the sky, several blocks away.
Then, she said, she heard an explosion.
She said she and her son went outside and saw the black smoke rising from the Queens crash site. She said it was "horrifying."
Paul said the sound of the plane gave her a "chill" -- because of what happened on Sept. 11.
The flight was an American Airlines jet, which had taken off from Kennedy Airport -- several miles from the crash site. It was headed to the Dominican Republic.
The crash came two months and a day after the attack on the World Trade Center.
The American Airlines phone number relatives information line is (800) 245-0999.
Lurking peacefully since 1997
Is this the same Rockaway Beach immortalized in the Ramones song of the same name?
Probably they sabotaged the plane... After all, you don't need to be in a plane to make it fall. But don't jump to conclusions...
WHAT?!?!?!?!??!?!!?
from sknews.co.uk
Plane Crashes In New York A plane has crashed into a residential area of New York. It is understood the plane was an Airbus A300 and suffered engine failure shortly after taking off from JFK airport. Reports say the aircraft may have been carrying up to 246 passengers when it plunged into homes in Queens. The jet, thought to be flight 587, was heading to Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. There are reports the plane hit a number of homes near Rockaway beach. One eyewitness said pieces of the plane were falling off mid-air. "I saw a large piece hit a hood of a car," one women told Fox News. "It seem to fold and fall onto a residential area," adding that she initially thought the plane was a Concorde. F16 fighter jets are now in the skies of New York - the incident comes two months after the US terrorist attacks on the US. Security chiefs said there was no evidence of terrorist activity but all airports in New York have now been closed as a precautionary measure. Bridges and tunnels have been closed The city has also been put on the highest state of alert. A huge plume of smoke is rising above the New York skyline as the wreckage burns. The Dow Jones dropped 200 points as news of the crash reached the markets. Early reports said the plane was a Boeing 767 - the same type which crashed into the World Trade Centre.Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You - ONLY HARDER!
You're preaching to the choir. I've had huge reservations about Pakistan from day one.
Having said that, I don't believe the "break the circle of violence" line either. That assumes that the other side is rational and wouldn't have done a damn thing had America not a) been in bed with Israel, b) been full of heathen Christians/Jews/Muslims who aren't *real* muslims, etc.
Funny how people assume the worst of us and the best of them. Sorry if you don't like it, but for the most part I'm for extracting bin Laden, and unfortunatly that's going to have a price, in terms of world politics and civilian deaths. Not the greatest of choices, but the best that could be expected.
I just got up, and saw this on the news. My parents flew out to Arizona this moring (from Logan), but it took 35 minutes for the freakin news station to say where the flight had originated. My parents flew American Airlines. Thanks to the slashdot team for posting the info. I feel horibly for any people who lost their lifes in this today. I pray that this was not yet another terrorist attack.
Um, this is my sig.
Info on the hardware involved at http://www1.airbus.com/products/A300.asp if you can get the site to respond. you can try www2 instead, is equaly bad for me, it will get worse with some /.ing
Maybe you live in interesting times
That's exactly how I feel about the matter, only I've never been able to formulate it that well. Thanks!
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
Given that neither reaction nor inaction will prevent further attacks
False assumption (typical relativism approach to framing an argument).
Destroying thousands of future soldiers, exterminating another relativist culture, removing a government that provides support for terrorist camps, creating a government that feeds and cares for the Afghan people (rather than beating and killing them), telling Islam that it had better start its reformation, and sending a message to other states that sponsor terrorism that they're next does make a significant impact.
Remember Libya? Backed off after we sent a message that was stronger than words.
Read your American history. Barbary pirates. Nazis. Mexican raids. Etc. A lack of response guarantees failure. A response is not a guarantee of success, but is required to have a chance at it.
Which course will polarise world opinion, leading previously moderate people to support radical organisations? (Clue: look at Pakistan.)
Appeasement to make "other people like us" is guaranteed to fail, and furthermore, makes dirty bastards like you as guilty as the killers. Your type killed millions of Czechs by appeasing Hitler.
Which course will kill innocent people abroad, in addition to those who have already died in the US?
Discussing both options like you've proposed, how does not doing anything not kill more people abroad and in the US? Do you think OBL is done now? Clue: Look at a plane on the ground in the Bronx. Do you think more terrorists like him will follow along if we don't act? Clue: Look at the Carter presidency.
Which course will perpetuate a cycle of violence and be used to justify further attacks?
Doing nothing will. Clue: Look at your examples supplied and a culture of minimal response. Clue: Look at Syria. Have a city threatening with insurrection? Exterminate it and set an example.
Is your desire to feel like you're doing something worth the consequences?
Is your desire to be a fatalist seeing his own destruction worth the consequences to the rest of society?
For our sake, I'd encourage you to seek the closest bridge, jump and get it over with. Quit bothering us with your fascination with suicide.
10:19 Eastern Standard Time, 11/12/01
Jet Crash in NYC Borough of Queens
ABC News
Plane Down Near JFK Airport
N E W Y O R K, Nov. 12 _ An American Airlines jet departing from John F. Kennedy International Airport crashed in a heavily populated section of the New York City borough of Queens at 9:17 a.m. ET, emergency officials said, and there was no report on the number of passengers and crew on board.
The jet, an Airbus 300, departed JFK at 9:15 a.m., officials said, when it crashed into an area populated with many homes and businesses. The American Airlines web site said Flight 587 was headed for Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. The plane crashed near Beach 129th Street and Newport Avenue, in the Rockaways section of Queens. There were no reports of injuries at the scene.
Thick black smoke could be seen billowing above the crash site for miles and several buildings were said to be on fire. Emergency crews raced to the scene.
Harriet Cohen, a Queens resident who lives near the airport and about 10 blocks from the crash site, said she was eating breakfast in her home when she thought she heard the Concorde leaving the airport. After hearing a terrible bang, she told her husband: "Oh my, I think it must have broken the sound barrier." But then the house shook, Cohen said. "I looked outside, and 10 blocks from us, there was black thick smoke rising up into the sky."
Minutes after the crash, all three New York City-area airports _ Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark _ were closed. Airports in Washington, D.C., remained open.
The incident comes two months after two hijacked jets rammed into the World Trade Center in Manhattan killing about 4,500.
An explanation of how the U.S. got involved in violence: What should be the Response to Violence?
Bush's education improvements were
At least this time it is not as big of a site. On Sept 11, I could see tsmoke cloud from my back yard.
FWIW, from the news here, it is NOT a terrorist action, but an accident. If it WAS a terrorist action, it would not be a direct hijacking but mechanical tampering.
~Steven
outside NYC
* which course will lead to huge American public backlash (clue: look at polls for desire to bomb)
* which course will produce huge economic turnaround by producing a post-war upturning
* which course will produce even more arms exports that can be used against the US. (The Afghans are using American weapons, after all.)
Just pointing those out. I agree with your points more than anyone, I'd say. I'm quite openly hostile towards people ignorant enough to believe that bombing a nation prone to generating suicidal bombers will make them less of a threat (short of a genocidal solution). But the people making the decisions are not the ones looking at the big picture; they're fighting their own bubble-world discourse.
http://www.cbsnews.com/now/story/0,1597,317684-412 ,00.shtml
A few more details. Little bit better than Yahoo's blurb.
bluB
Cloudkicker
Click10.com has live video, mirrored by akami.
Text:_ crash_dc_1.html d ex.html - PLANE.html n id=GX1YUYCNLN1WQCRBAE0CFFAKEEATGIWD?type=topnews&S toryID=365206 7 84-2001Nov12.html a p-plane-crash1112nov12.story?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dnatio nworld%2Dheadlines
y News/STREAM1_video_popoff/index.html
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20011112/ts/plane
http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/11/12/newyork.crash/in
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/nyregion/12WIRE
http://www.usatoday.com/hlead.htm
http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessio
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,38565,00.html
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-
Video:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/us/popoff/Dail
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
Here is a 300K Broadband Live News link to BBC
/ bb c1099/ads/default/bbc_default.asx?cmd=engage&asxty pe=adonly&site=bbcx001&area=ent&rate=350
http://bbcx001.ontarget.media.ibeam.com/netshow
got it from windowsmedia.com =]]
Sure. OTOH, the terrorists destroy the WTC and kill the father and mother of an american child, who grows up listening to people like you saying that he shouldn't do anything about it and that he should protest any attempts to destroy the terrorists because "violence creates violence". 25 years later, that kid grows up turned into another peaceful, civilized citizen who opposes any U.S. intervention against Afghanistan or other countries... and is killed by another attack perpetrated by the terrorists that we failed to capture after the WTC.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that the U.S. should do anything in its hands to solve the Israeli-Palestinan problem (if only to leave Bin Laden without arguments). But that doesn't exclude using the force to capture or destroy the criminals. And if you think otherwise, I invite you to step up the next time the police in your zone has a serial killer surrounded and try to talk him into giving up his evil ways, instead of letting the cops using (horror!!) physical force to arrest him.
Here's the flight tracking info from Flytecomm. Please don't kill my server. Thanks.
Thats what Ananova are saying here anyway.
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
Passenger Jet Crashes in Queens, NY
NEW YORK (AP) - An American Airlines flight that had just taken off for the Dominican Republic crashed Monday, and buildings reportedly were on fire in the Queens section of New York City.
Flight 587, an Airbus A300 that can hold 275 passengers, crashed shortly after 9 a.m. and thick, black smoke could be seen miles away. There was no report of the number of casualties, either on the plane or on the ground.
Thick, black smoke could be seen miles away from the crash in the Rockaways section of Queens.
The crash came two months after the attack on the World Trade Center, which was destroyed by two Boeing 767s hijacked out of Boston's Logan Airport. One of the planes was operated by American, the other by United.
Bill Schumann of the Federal Aviation Administration (news - web sites) said there was no immediate indication of what caused the crash. He said the plane crashed about five miles from Kennedy Airport.
All metro area airports - Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark - were closed following the crash, in Rockaway, Queens. The Office of Emergency Management said all bridges and tunnels in the city were closed except to emergency vehicles.
Planes were being diverted, and Delta Air Lines spokeswoman Peggy Estes said the airline was working to account for all its planes.
The mayor canceled his morning events and headed to the scene.
One eyewitness reported debris falling from sky, and told the Fox News Channel four homes were on fire.
Another told CNN he was 40 blocks away and saw ``just a lot of smoke. Tons and tons of smoke. You can see emergency vehicles heading to the area. Lots of people are standing in the streets. It's very tense.''
Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You - ONLY HARDER!
I've read several comments here regarding hijacking. Supposing this is a terrorist attack, it is very unlikely that they would even consider hijacking. With all of the new security measures in place, such a hijacking would be nearly impossible.
I've read reports that an engine fell out. If this is true, sabotage is what we should worry about. If these terrorists were smart enough to plan the September 11 attacks years in advance, then we should assume they are smart enough to have people working at airports all over the US.
At this point we can only hope that this is not a terrorist attack. If terrorism is the cause (for example, by means of sabotage, as I've suggested), then this may raise even more security issues than the WTC attacks.
:(
I don't think it's such a horrible reaction, since a terrorist crash would likely indicate more to follow. A mechanical failure only affects one plane.
Either is a horrible event, but there is the lesser of the two evils.
http://wsulug.org
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
has a link to a realmedia stream.
Dosnt show the event itself, but shows the smoke coming up, and has a 15 minute report
0101100101101111011101010110110101110101011100110
Not to harp, but the article said the plane was a Boeing Airbus A300. As other posters have said, we need to wait and sort this stuff how. Bad as it may sound, lets hope this was an accident... The media have a REALLY bad habit of reporting without checking the facts. Boeing (US company) is a competetor of Airbus (multinational european company). If they cant even get the most basic facts straight, why would anyone believe their posturing and theorizing.
The ivory tower has never had to reach so h
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thanks slashdot, your coverage is crucial!
I hope I'm overreacting a bit here.. there's something about this that's giving me the chills. I really hope this is 'simply' a case of pilot error, or a simple electromechanical failure.
Proteus' Child
Doko ni datte; hito wa, tsunagette iru.
Sorry, but the main cause for terrorism aren't the religious fundamentalists.
They are just a symptom for some major thing going wrong on this planet. Remember that there are even Terrorists who are Americans and place bombs (maybe even Antrax) in the US.
So It would be neccesary not only getting rid of the "Bin Laden"s but to change politics in general to have a real impact on the level of hate in this world.
And seriuosly, I doubt that Mr. "America first" Bush is capable of doing so.
k2r
(Neither I believe that out European politicians will get a clue, it's not only Mr. Bush)
not only that...
the family situation would be more realistic like that:
Father killed during the civil war or by the taliban, mother raped and needing to beg since she is not allowed to work. 2 of the childred killed or maimed by landmines (have you ever seen a picture of a leg that was torn apart by a mine or a cluster bomblet?). One more close to dying of hunger....
Well, and now you are sitting with the remaining family in a refugee camp somewhere at the border, because yet another super power thinks it has to control your countries affairs. Maybe you even have a little tent...but forget about food or blankets...oh, did i mention that winter is approaching?
Now imagine that this were your family...who would you want to kill afterwards?
For those of us at work who don't have a TV in front of us, you can join CNN net and join the #newsfeed channel for the latest news. Misspellings aside, it's up to date info.
Seriously, this reinforces my conviction that aircraft safety & security is going in completely the wrong direction. Why focus so heavily on trying to prevent very specific types of incident? Why not simply design aircraft on the assumption that they're going to crash (by accident or design), and build them to keep as many people alive as possible?
For example - there are parachutes, built for jet airliners, capable of safely bringing even a 747 or 757 to a safe(ish) landing, assuming enough altitude to slow the monster down.
Another example - if a package holding eggs can be dropped from the top of the Empire State Building, and have the eggs intact at the bottom, you can figure that we know a lot about air resistance with various topologies, and that we know how to make a decent bubble-wrap. It should be possible to design an aircraft skin capable of absorbing significant amounts of energy, in the event of an impact.
Lastly, aircraft are not built out of the safest of materials. Aluminium (aluminum for USians) burns with an intense ferocity. Those who remember the Falkland's War (damn it, it was a WAR, not a "Conflict") will remember the HMS Sheffield, which was built out of aluminium. One direct hit turned it into a giant, inescapable fireball. Many fireworks, and even some modern munitions, use aluminium as a component. Sure, it's light, but so are many other materials. Maybe it's time to change.
We've entered the 21st century, with aircraft that are practically designed to explode on someone sneezing the wrong way, with no possibility of survival. As ideas go, this does not sound like the brightest there has ever been.
Of course, maybe I could be wrong. Maybe people enjoy riding oversized firecrackers, with a bazillion mad-men around the world desperately wanting to light the fuse.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
If you really feel this way, let me ask you:
In short, if we are a nation that claims to believe in a set of principles above all else, but we are unwilling to fight for these principles, then we are a nation of hypocrites.
This is the ananova writeup.. :P
President Bush will surely wish you a good night and tell you that he was right after all. None less than that. Of course stay alert, but also keep an eye on your beloved president
I feel sorry for all victims and all security people. Lots of internet news sites (at least here in The Netherlands) are DDoSed *again*. Has anything changed since two months ago?
From Ananova
Ananova :
Terrorism ruled out as cause of Queens crash
Terrorism has been ruled out as a cause of the Queens air crash.
Up to 246 passengers are thought to have been aboard the American Airlines Airbus A300.
All New York area airports have been closed following the crash, in the Rockaways area of Queens, a residential neighbourhood under the JFK airport flight path.
Bridges and tunnels into New York have also been closed but the Federal Aviation Authority has ruled out terrorism as a cause.
The organisation earlier stated that the cause of the crash is not known, although there are reports the jet suffered engine failure.
Washington says US Air Force patrols over New York received no calls before the crash.
Fighters have been flying over the city's skies 24 hours a day since September 11. Crews have been told they must be prepared to shoot down any hijacked civilian aircraft if ordered to do so.
The passenger jet had taken off from John F Kennedy Airport - five to 10 miles away, when it crashed into buildings and burst into flames.
Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has joined rescue services at the scene. At least four buildings are said to be on a fire. One witness reported debris falling from sky and told the Fox News Channel that four homes were on fire.
Another told CNN he was 40 blocks away and saw: "Just a lot of smoke. Tons and tons of smoke. You can see emergency vehicles heading to area. Lots of people are standing in the streets. It's very tense."
It was an Airbus a300...
26X people on board...
9 crew.
I hate relaying bad news.
www.npr.org has a RealAudio/Quicktime/Windows Media feed.
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
It takes weeks to find wreckage and figure what causes plane crashes (remember Flight 800 to Paris) ANyone ruling out ANYTHING right now is either a blatent falsehood OR propaganda meant to calm the American People
Jesse Wolfe Sr. Manager Systems Integration
Excuse me but that is just plain bullshit.
It is actually quite normal for planes to crash every now and then, therefore it is most likely to be an accident.
1. We're threatened with further attacks.
2. Two weeks later, a plane crashes.
You do the math, bucko.
-Waldo
So I tried the BBC which I consider just as, if not better, at reporting then the american journalists.
www.cbsnews.com has a real video webcast that seems to be working.
CNN eyewitness account...u s. crash.1211.wav
http://europe.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/11/12/
here's a link to the msnbc coverage: http://www.msnbc.com/news/default.asp?cp1=1
WWLUG: Feed the penguin.
CNN live closed captioning is available at #CNN_Newsfeed at chat.cnn.com.
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/nyregion/12W IRE-PLANE.html
Or for the lazy ones
New York Times (archive)
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that the U.S. should do anything in its hands to solve the Israeli-Palestinan problem (if only to leave Bin Laden without arguments).
All indications are that what Bin Laden hates is the current Saudi government (King Fahd, pretty tyrannical and Taliban-like himself, frankly) and the U.S. support for that self-same government. While I would like to see peace in Israel/Palestine, it's not the key issue here.
Note that in Mazar-e-Sharif, women dispensed with their burqas, went to mosques, and regained the rights they had lost to the Taliban, now that the Northern Alliance has retaken the city. So have a little good news for today.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Wouldn't a "routine" (cringe) plane crash be easy to determine by the conversations going back and forth with Air Traffic Control? I'd figure a simple radio call with "Oh crap - we've got an engine on fire - attempting emergency landing" would be very soothing (well, in light of recents events) to the nation at this point.
As all the major news portals seem to be struggling under the load, check www.ananova.com - it's up, fast and stayed alive during September 11th. They seem to be up-to-the minute with their information too.
----------------------------------------
Religious war: fighting over who has the real imaginary friend.
replace "protectionists" with "isolationists", damn submit and preview buttons are so close before my coffee.
i live in brooklyn, and i was glad to see that the sky was full of fighter jets with in 5 minutes rather then the hour+ on 9-11. i know in actuality it doesnt really help anything, but it makes the lot of us feel a little more secure, at least as secure as you can with 5000 lbs of bombs wizzing over head
--rock me like a huricane? NO rock you
Try #CNN_Newsfeed on chat.cnn.com:6667 for a live feed of closed-captions off CNN.
it's too early to speculate about terrorist attack/accident/whatever. however, this won't change the facts: people will be afraid of flying for a long time. which means more plane companies layoffs. which means PERHAPS some troubles regarding economy..
..and THIS makes the terrorists' game. fear, and (as the name tells) terror is their play. solution? since you cannot run away from a plane crashing, nor from a virus spreading, keep doing whatever you do. if something happens, well, at least your job could have helped someone. and you cannot escape anyway.
and as my grandfather used to say, "a bomb never hits the same crater twice". So I figure that the 'most dangerous' places are now the most safe.. there are so many places to hit all over the world, the terrorist probably won't hit the most surveilled ones again, since the chances to succeed are few.
ok, I'm speculating again. but my idea is still the same: keep working, keep living, keep thinking with your brain. terrorist attack or just fear, what's the difference? you personally cannot fight either.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Perhaps things will get better now we've closed Railtrack down...
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
This article does not seem to suggest *where* they got this FAA Information. Secondly, the FAA never makes the call this fast. The most they might say is "it appears to have been engine trouble" and that would be information they got from the pilots through tower contact. And, even if it *is* engine problems, it doesn't rule out sabatoge, or explosives.
And how did I get an offtopic out of this? Offtopic? WTF is offtopic about what I wrote? I stated what I knew.
Insightful, not really but it was a positive vote. Thanks.
Overrated? Well, I suppose so. That's an opinion and you're entitled to it. Offtopic and redundant is just wrong.
If you'd rather not dork around trying to cut and paste it all into your browser See streets here At this writing it's slow.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Hmmm, the United Nations security council meeting's agendawas addressed to confronting the terrorist threat, the current conflict in afghanistan and organising the post-taliban regime. How far is the UN from the crash site already?
Swagman
I wanted to see the news at CNN.com, but it refuses. Haven't they learned from the last tragedy, that their server would be down since tons of people would come to browse their websites to see the urgent news? What are these websites for anyway? I know that watching CNN on TV is certain, but I don't have the environment to watch them. (I live outside USA) I tried to watch other news websites, but was impossible also. Does this means that people have to watch TV instead of website(s) to see such serious news that people would read almost simultaneously?
You're correct of course. The FAA have now reverted to saying "all options are open."
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
An insider, possibly a mechanic, rigged the engine with a bomb. Now I'm going to stretch this a bit and say that there might have been actual hijackers on the plane, and that they were forcefully taken down... but the engine bomb still went off.
Though you don't actually need to put any kind of "bomb" into a jet engine in order to do a lot of damage. Not only is there plenty of fuel in the engine (and in the wing tanks) there is a lot of energy in the fan/compressor & turbine assembly.
I can't recall the flight number off the top of my head, but I remember reading an NTSB report of a crash near Anchorage where one of the engines literally fell off the wing.
Either way it's terrible, but I have to concur with the people who are saying this is a "real" crash.
irb(main):001:0>
Hello,
I am getting a flow of information from different sources and posting them on planenews.com
Gil.
PGP public key at: http://keskydee.com/gil.asc
The reports coming into CNN are saying that one of the engines (left or right, the reports vary) was on fire before the crash. So, barring sabotage, I don't think this was an act of terrorism.
Well said. To quote Randy Bush without permission:
Resist the cycle of violence and hate.
That's not necessarily wierd. People tend to think that if a two-engine plane loses one engine, it can just use the other to get to safety. One engine is a huge loss, especially on takeoff. The airplane won't be able to gain altitude (at least not quickly), and the plane will tend to veer in one direction. Depending on what point in the takeoff and climb-out the engine failed or fell off, the plane may have stalled (lost lift) and been too close to the ground to recover. NPR reported that this plane was in a 60 degree dive when it hit, so that is entirely possible.
Here's an aerial photo of 122nd and Rockaway: click!. The intersection, I believe is just east of the large building.
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
Well, if the engine fell out of the plane, it was probably an accident. Not for sure, of course, but i don't see how Hijackers could do that.
It might have been sabotage though...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
We all need to stop and take a few steps back. The events of the last 2 months have taken this country to the brink of hysteria and back. The mainstream press is in a feeding frenzy. They are reporting any rumor that they can get their hands on, all in the name of boosting ratings. Take a look at the last Presidential election and you will see that the self-control that the press once had has disappeared. We cannot allow their drive for money to turn us into a country full of "Chicken Little's" waiting for the sky to fall.
Stop, take a breath, and realize that things like this happen. If we allow ourselves to continue down this road, we will accomplish what no country on this planet has been able to do, bring the US to its knees. People are paralyzed by fear, and the press is feeding this fear. It is time to stop.
Yes, it is terrible when people die, but it happens everyday. Worrying about it will not change it. I believe we should find the people responsible for terrorist attacks and bring them to justice, but not at the cost of our freedom, which is where we are headed. I have heard more members of the press and the government shouting for "National ID Cards", increased security at all public functions, COMDEX banned bags from the convention floor. All of these steps are doing the terrorist work for them. If we allow these criminals to alter our way of life to the point that we cease to function, or regulate ourselves into and Orwellian nightmare then we may as well lie down and die.
Live you life as you always have. Go to work, raise your kids, spend your money, and be happy until given a legitimate reason not to be. Out of all the posts on this site, how many are from people directly affected by 09/11, who either knew someone who is missing, or has family that lost a loved one. The rest of us need to feel sympathetic to the victims and their families, but we should also feel grateful that we are alive, living in the best country on the planet, and act that way.
http://robots.cnn.com/ works fine, seems they have learned a thing or two about load balancing at CNN.
Any news on how the OPEC countries are hurting from the lower use of their product?
Rich
Reports says an engine exploded. This could be a heat seeking missile from some loose F16, what do you think ?
It now sounds like both engines actually fell off the plane. This makes terrorism a possible option again.
I was watching the news, and I believe I heard them say that one of the engines fell into someone's boat in the backyard.
Many people seem to think that by being fearful of a possible terrorist attack we are letting the terrorist win. After a recent plane crash in Queens, NY there has already been some talk of terrorism and the fear of terrorism, even though there is no evidence at this point to support a terrorist attack. As I think about this I am reminded that, "A concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that [are] real and immediate [is] the process of a rational mind." Now I don't know that there is always an immediate threat of terrorism, but there is a danger that is real and more immediate now than ever before. A concern for one's safety then is rational, but I keep hearing that if you are rational and concerned for your safety to the point where it affects the way you live then the terrorist have won. If you are not concerned for your safety then you are ignorant, and you probably believe the lie that having concern for your safety does in fact mean that the terrorist have won. So if we are rational people then the terrorist have won and if we are ignorant of what is going on around us then they have not won?
I think that there is no relationship between the terrorist winning or losing and our concern for our safety. The only way in which the terrorist have won, is in confusing people in to thinking that having a rational concern for their safety is illogical. Living your life as if nothing has happened is illogical. The fact of the matter is that "a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that [are] real and immediate [is] the process of a rational mind", and so this concern which has been fueled by the terrorist attacks does not mean that the terrorist have won. It means that we are logical, competent people who are concerned for our safety. The terrorists are not logical, competent people (and probably have no concern for their safety). The terrorists have only succeeded in confusing and angering the American people, and they are the ones who now should have a concern for their safety. They are in fact facing real and immediate danger.
-Christopher Mark Beelby
Quotes from Catch-22
I've seen video footage of engine failures resulting in total destruction. The engines don't seperate from the wing. They're designed so that the plane can keep on flying even with total engine destruction.
Total engine destruction is the fan blades seperating. Imagine 100 blades rotating at 1000s of RPMs flying in every direction. The engine case takes the beating without the wing being damaged. The engine is destroyed but the plane keeps flying.
I don't know what this was, but it wasn't like any mechanical failure I've ever heard of.
http://kered.org
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
This is quite possibly the most idiotic statement I've ever read in my life. The US did as close to nothing as possible after the first WTC bombing, the embassy bombings, the Khobar tower bombings, and the USS Cole bombings. It didn't work, and 6000 people died very recently. I think it's time for a new strategy.
Even in peacetime, 35000 people die in automobile accidents on US roads every year. That's the same level of suffering as the WTC attack every two months and yet nobody bats an eyelid.
It really looks like some people like that karma stuff;
*turns head slowly side to side in disgust/disbelief*
Don't forget there are other sites where you can post info and News, especially with news coming out so slowly.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Actually, the only place I've actually seen that report was on the Telegraph. Could you find that information anywhere else, too?
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
News for Nerds == News. 'Nuff said.
sulli
RTFJ.
Here is a live video feed. 56K, 100K, and 300K Real Video.
Can all fish swim?
Don't know if this will be useful to anyone, but there have been several other crashes involving this same plane. Here's a link to a report dealing with this. -cobweb
||:|::
i think you'll find that that comment is actually his signature rather than part of his comment. i dont think he was suggesting that it was a non-event.
Any plane loaded with fuel will ALWAYS be a giant firecracker! Until people are willing to ride in planes without fuel, they will be dangerous...
...Even if a plane were constructed out of some impact-resistant uber composite material, what about that 50,000 gallons of fuel? All it takes is 1 spark or a little heat and BOOM!
And fitting planes with parachutes? What happens to the passengers when this giant parachute deploys at 600 mph? Bags and people flying all over the place, getting killed...what would happen if it accidentally (or deliberately) deployed?
Instead of criticising airplane manufacturers for rediculous reasons, why not ask the obvious:
1) Why can't they put x-ray machines in airports for checked luggages so people don't put bombs in them?
2) Why can't airlines maintain their aircraft so the engines don't fall off?
Think, man.
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
Occam's Razor says that this crash too was a terrorist attack, caused by some freak carrying plastic explosive in his suitcase. What are the chances that a fully-fueled American Airlines jumbo jet would just happen to crash into a residential area of New York City at a time like this? What's the most likely explanation?
But it doesn't matter what the cause was, either way the terror of flying will multiply.
We have been given us a new freedom: freedom from security.
There are NO such parachutes. Let's do some real simple calcs. I believe a standard human parachute is 28 feet in diameter, for a human weighing 200 pounds. A fully loaded 747 is around 800,000 pounds, 4000 times as much. Let's see, square root of 4000 is roughly 64, and 64 * 28 = 1770 feet -- ONE KILOMETER!
Are you so nuts as to think that practical?
And do you think it could be deployed at several hundred miles an hour without shredding?
Dropping an egg is one thing, an airline entirely difefrent. A egg has a pretty low terminal air velocity because of the weight per surface area. Comparing this to an airliner is like saying an ant can fall safely, why can't humans? Even cats have a sufficiently low terminal velocity that once they fall past 10 stories or so, they don't fall any faster, and they still don't have a great survival rate. Let's give that cat the density of an airliner and see what happens to the terminal velocity.
Now as to material. The HMS Sheffield DID NOT BURN due to aluminum. It burned because the Exocet has an explosive warhead which scattered and ignited the remaining rocket fuel. It was not a giant inescapable fireball. Jeez, your hyperbole is incredible.
It's easy enough for you to worry about aluminum burning, but what does that have to do with airliners burning? Hey! It's the FUEL that explodes and burns, not the structure! Maybe we should all fly naked too, so our clothes won't contribute to the fire.
As for arbitrarily increasing the weight by getting rid of aluminum, common sense ought to inform you that they use expensive materials for a reason. Don't you think that if they could make heavier cheaper planes that they would? There's no secret airplane cabal conspiring to jack up the prices just to keep the bauxite miners employed. Man, they fret over new seat materials to save a pound per seat.
As for airplane design not being the brightest ideas out there, sounds to me like they've got you beat at any rate.
Infuriate left and right
People are harping on not jumping to conclusions but let's look at the facts:
There've been 12 Airbus crashes since 1988 (1 of those was during a engine failure simulation). None of them were landing or flying from the US (bbc article here).
New York is obviously a major target for air terror. If you consider the probabilities, the most likely is an act of terror. Just my 2c.
i hope so, but..
if an engine came off before the crash [which could be caused by or cause the explosion] that's damned unlikely. twa800 and that dc10 years ago are the only similar events i can think of right now.
more likely that instead of trying the harder method of hijacking and aiming an airliner at a building, just explode one on takeoff from NY. the area and amount of gas involved will have the same effect post sept11: terror.
i'm not fear mongering: the way to react to terrorism is to face it and remain calm.
that's not easy. it's not meant to be easy. it's the only answer though.
hard times. speak truth to power.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
This is a rather unfounded theory, but it's possible to imagine this.
The fourth plane that crashed on sept. 11 was about 5 minutes away from the closest nuclear plant on its course to DC. It, too, had an engine break off and crash in a separate location. The government has been very secretive about that crash. There is data that a fighter was following it at the time of the crash, and based on that we can only theorize what really happened.
It is possible to think that this plane was hijacked, not responding, and a fighter was dispatched to take it down. The credibility of this theory would largely be defined by verified data about the plane's route before the crash - if it suddenly changed its course after going some ways over the water, this would be credible.
The same mode of failure as the Penn plane may indicate the same fate: a Sidewinder missile (IR-guided) will target an engine and rip it off the wing; also, a cannon (the "cleanest" way to take it out) would probably also be shot at the engine/wing.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
This might be another way of killing Bin Laden. Right now I figure he's somewhere near laughing himeself to death at this overreaction. Please remamber that plane crashes happen, and this one does not have any of the hallmarks of terrorist action.
all of the security in the world isn't going to stop murphy's law fromm causing the occasional f*ck up. Flying is still safer than driving, but reading the news may cause a heart-attack if you attribute every tragedy to terrorism.
Let investigators do their job. In the unlikely event that they determine this to be of terrrorist cause, then we can take the appropriate actions
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
To save bandwidth for everyone and improve response times, please don't go to the BBC's high-graphics front page. Go directly to their low-graphics news page.
This way, you not only save bandwidth on the page you want to see, but you avoid wasting bandwidth and server hits on the pages you don't want to see.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
News release on media's recount of presidential vote swamped off the radar by the stories on NYC air plane crash.
Other stories crushed by it include war news like nukes and bio/chemical weapons in Afghanistan.
On the other hand, it's a great time to buy cheap stocks.
I hear that the plane crashed near Beach 128th and New Port.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
WCBS-2 (local TV station in NYC) is reporting that all bags on this American Airlines flight were screened before being loaded on to the plane. This is not standard operating procedure, but since 9/11, it is being done occasionally on a random basis.
Also, another NYC TV station (not sure which one) said a little while ago that the pilot of this flight DID perform a visual pre-flight inspection -- walking around the plane to look for obvious problems.
www.thebravest.com has live stream of FDNY Radio. I cant get anything now, im sure due to heavy traffic, but maybe someone will have luck.
Don't Tread on Me
A lack of response guarantees failure.
Only if you define success as the destruction of the enemy, which in the case of terrorism is an impossible goal. (You cannot destroy an idea, except by killing everyone who has been exposed to it, which includes yourself.) Even if you define success as the destruction of terrorists, the numbers are against you: for every terrorist you kill, at least one new terrorist will be recruited. And you will probably have to kill several innocent people per terrorist, because terrorists don't do you the favour of living in barracks.
Appeasement to make "other people like us" is guaranteed to fail, and furthermore, makes dirty bastards like you as guilty as the killers.
Let me see if I understand you: someone like me who objects to the bombing of innocent people is a dirty bastard and guilty of terrorism. Whereas someone like you who openly supports the bombing of innocent people is the farthest thing you can imagine from a terrorist.
Your type killed millions of Czechs by appeasing Hitler.
And your "type" killed millions of Americans and Germans by opposing Hitler. Perhaps that was necessary, perhaps it was the right decision in 1941, perhaps more than 55 million people would have been killed if the world had not gone to war. But despite what CNN tells you, Osama bin Laden is not Hitler. He is not the head of a national army. He is a terrorist. His followers live among us, so they cannot be stopped by purely military means. The only way to stop terrorism is to address the issues that make people so angry that they decide to become terrorists.
Do you think more terrorists like him will follow along if we don't act? Clue: Look at the Carter presidency.
You obviously watched Ronald Reagan's election campaign before you retreated to your bunker, but I have some news for you: while you were underground, we found out that the Reagan administration sold arms to Iran (yes, the same Iran that took those hostages) to fund terrorists in Nicaragua. Which makes any criticism of the Carter administration for appeasing terrorists look pretty stupid.
Look at your examples supplied and a culture of minimal response. Clue: Look at Syria. Have a city threatening with insurrection? Exterminate it and set an example.
Look at Canada. Have a province that wants to secede? Hold an election. Are you seriously suggesting that the US should model itself on Syria?
For our sake, I'd encourage you to seek the closest bridge, jump and get it over with. Quit bothering us with your fascination with suicide.
I'm not opposing the bombing because I want to be killed. I'm opposing the bombing because I don't want to be killed. Bombing Afghanistan is drawing people to the terrorist cause and making it more likely that I'll get killed. It's also killing innocent people on the ground.
This was a flight that was destined for the Dominican Republic and other destinations in the Caribbean. According to FAA reports, the plane was booked to capacity and may well have had all it's booked passengers on board.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
There are several reasons to assume that this was a bomb.
1) Credible warning of another terrorist attack from Nov 7-14 issued a few weeks ago.
2) It was an international flight loaded to full capacity with gas.
3) Luggage on international flights out of jfk are not required to be scanned for explosives.
4) Wing and fuselage crashed in two separate sites, meaning a great force must have seperated them.
Im not saying we can be sure 100% that this was a bomb, there are several strong indicators that it was.
One Captain Marchessi was interviewed live over the telephone on Spain's national television, TVE. He said (and I am paraphrasing here) that Airbus planes are designed to survive the loss of an engine, and that pilots are trained for precisely such an eventuality; therefore, he believes, it is unlikely that the loss of thrust alone would have caused the plane to crash. (To his credit, he declined to speculate further despite pressure from the reporter.)
Now, can somebody tell me whether the phrase "the loss of an engine" in this context could mean the physical loss of the engine? Or is it just an idiom meaning "the loss of an engine's thrust"? I mean -- are these planes really designed to account for the possible dettachment of an engine?
Two thoughts on this:
1) Most of the sites are probably more available today than on 9/11 because today is a holiday in the US and many people are not at work. Not being at work means they have reduced Internet access(read: dialup) in most cases, but abundant access to TV. My guess is that most people are at home watching it on the tube today.
2) Sites like BBC (Brits aren't on holiday today) have gone into reduced-bandwidth mode with limited graphics. This is to support the extra load created by the sudden increased in hits.
...but I specifically remember people criticizing all of our efforts to beef up passenger security in airports while neglecting to beef up tarmac security. It was said that nearly anyone can get on the tarmac, and anyone who can pass the test can become a mechanic, often times with no background check.
It seems more likely to me that if this is a result of terrorst activities, it was done as an inside job. Our own press probably gave them the idea.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
As nasty as this sounds, it isn't without precedent. In the late 70's, I forget the year, an engine fell off of a Lockheed L1011 at 30,000 feet. Killed everyone... most heinous crash. The maintenance guy who put in the bolts installed them in the wrong order after the engine was removed for an overhaul.
It is actually quite normal for planes to crash every now and then, therefore it is most likely to be an accident.
A good example to support this point is the Sibir Airlines plane that went down in the Black Sea a month ago. Initially it was assumed to be terrorism (especially since the plane departed from Israel). However the consensus is now that it was hit by a stray Ukrainian missile that got away from its test range.
So even though terrorism might be the most likely reason for the New York crash, and the first thing that should be investigated, it is not the only possibility.
The peaceful solution is always preferable. Unfortunately, this would frequently require the use of a time machine, as the opportunity has often long since passed by the time you realise what the solution was. Once terrorists have been produced in the first place, there is clearly something wrong, and merely turning the other cheek just gets you hit somewhere else. The only option is messy patch ups, and hope that eventually the problem will recede.
I'd like to suggest an easy solution. I'd also like a leprechaun's pot of gold, but they don't exist either.
Here here. If history teaches us anything, it's that force works and appeasement does not.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Note I currently think this was "just" a plane crash.
...I live in Rockaway, bitch...
1 -- I worry b/c the plane originated from Boston
2 -- I worry b/c today is 11-12
3 -- I worry b/c Mike Moran said
4 -- I worry b/c I am in the Travel industry and my company nearly went out of business on 9-12
But all in all accident or attack my company is fucked.
This
Now, I love a conspiracy theory as much as anyone, but this plane did not come down the same way. For starters, this one came down in a heavily populated area on a penninsula. Had the plane traveled for another 45 seconds (or even less?) before going down, it would plop into the water. (Unless of course, it turned and was headed toward land.)
Also, from what I gather right now, it had only been in the air for 2 minutes. I find it hard to believe that any Air Force jets could get information that the plane was compromised, get into position to fire, and verify that the plane was a legit target before firing within that timeframe. Then again, I am not an expert on these things so perhaps anything is possible.
Antony, standing over the body of Caesar: O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth, that I am meek and gentle with these butchers! Thou art the ruins of the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times. Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood! Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,-- which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips, to beg the voice and utterance of my tongue-- A curse shall light upon the limbs of men; domestic fury and fierce civil strife shall cumber all...blood and destruction shall be so in use. And dreadful objects so familiar that mothers shall but smile when they behold their infants quarter'd with the hands of war; all pity choked with custom of fell deeds: and Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge, with Ate by his side come hot from hell, shall in these confines with a monarch's voice cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war; that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial. Julius Caesar Act 3, Scene 1
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
I knew something was wrong when I woke up this morning and none of the news sites were picking up. There was this awful ping of complete and total fear where I literally felt my heart fall into stomach... something was wrong.
I ran downstairs and turned on the TV and saw the breaking news. I now know, whenever cnn, msnbc and abcnews ALL don't pick up... and then ny1.com doesn't either... that something awful has happened again in New York.
The majority of Pakistani's are moderate. In the latest call for a national strike called by the radicals the crowds failed to materialise. The radical minority are just that and hated the USA before Operation Enduring Freedom and will hate the USA after it's completed.
"Which course will kill innocent people abroad, in addition to those who have already died in the US? (Clue: look at Afghanistan.)"
Reports out of Afghanistan suggest tha the Taleban have been comprehensively routed in the North of the country. Humanitarian aid can now be delivered which with the advance of winter means many thousands more will be saved. The Taleban has treated it's population with utter and complete brutality.
"Which course will perpetuate a cycle of violence and be used to justify further attacks? (Clue: look at the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine.)"
There is peace in the Balkans, the IRA is decommissing it's arms - a historic precedent.
Israel and the Palestinians were close to a deal once and there is increasing evidence that the current intifada may be halted as it has failed to achieve any concrete improvement in the lives of every day palestinians and may have weakened the negoitiating position of the PLA.
"Is your desire to feel like you're doing something worth the consequences?"
Yes it is.
You've still more chance of winning the lottery than dieing in one. Speak for yourself, but I'm planning on winning the lottery. I'm staying out of the sky.
IMO bin laden claimed responisbiliry yesterday so perhaps that was a signal
Forget about using the major networks... get your info from the sources:
Reuters Last 25 Articles
AP Wire
Any others?
Davak
http://www.carotids.com
A commercial jet is able to withstand the physical (separate) and thrustwise loss of an engine. In fact, aircraft engines are designed deliberately to "fall off" from the wing. Imagine for the sake of argument, that the turbine blades are turning at around 10,000 RPM. Now, stick a Canadian Goose in front of it, so that some of the blades break of an jam the engine so the blades no longer turn. Can you imagine how much momentum (gyroscopic) that these blades have? Suddenly stopping them instantaneously would create so much of an impulse that the engine will twist itself right off. No damage is done to the wing (less some drag) and there is plenty of thrust from N2.
The tricky part is, if (as is in this case) the engine explodes, THEN falls off, there is likely damage done to the wings (likely the flaps on takeoff as may be the case here) and possibly the hydraulic systems, etc.
Bottom line is, the plane can withstand flying literally without an engine, but any collateral damage can change the situation.
The higher, the fewer.
Since the latest reports seem to suggest that there was a mid-air explosion before the plane came down, people might be interested in reading this notice from the FAA requiring that modifications be performed on Airbus A300 series aircraft in order to eliminate a possible cause of fuel tank explosion. Judging by the dates on the notice -- effective September 10, modifications must be performed within 18 months -- I'd guess that many planes haven't been modified yet.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Read more at the Times of India
-Shaunak.
Even if you define success as the destruction of terrorists, the numbers are against you: for every terrorist you kill, at least one new terrorist will be recruited.
That is a ridiculous argument. There is no factual evidence to base it on. If you killed every human on earth, there could be no more terrorists.
It is also possible, even probable that other actions could be taken that would not result in an equal number of people becoming terrorists.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Boston.com (http://www.boston.com) is reporting:
LATEST UPDATES: The FBI is investigating reports from eyewitnesses that there was an explosion on the plane while it was still in the air. AP says the pilot did not report any trouble before the crash, but CBS reports that a United Airlines pilot heard the American Airlines pilot tell traffic control he was having mechanical trouble.
Logan Airport is open, but there is no service to New York. Some international flights are being diverted from N.Y. to Boston.
With the present financial difficulties for airline operators, it seems highly probable to me that severe cost cutting will have swiftly resulted in reduced aeroplane maintenance and fewer safety checks.
Futhermore money diverted into increased security is money diverted from day-to-day operations. The current climate of fear in the US probably makes accidental crashes more likely.
Programmers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your strings.
Accrding to this site, an average of 110+ people are killed every day in automobile accidents - and we never give that a second thought.
National Highway Traffic Saftey Association-Fatal Accident Reporting System
My prayers go out to all the families affected by this :(
I dunno about that... I don't live anywhere near NYC, and talking to real people (i.e. not listening to people on TV) I haven't heard of anyone actually being scared. If you look at the big picture, there really isn't much widescale "terror" to the terrorism; the country is just too big.
Get away from the northeastern USA, and the only way the terrorism is really affecting most people's lives, is the reaction that it has provoked from the government. The actual plane crashes themselves are just Yet Another television thing.
That must sound really weird or insensitive to New Yorkers, I guess. But it's true.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you're so f'n smart, how do we support and fix these social ills? By propping up nice regimes? Is there such a thing as a nice Gov't in that part of the world? Is there anything that even resembles a real Gov't in that part of the world, and not some spoiled oil princes on polo ponies?
Nice totalitarian leaders and kings?
That is the problem with that part of the world. Yes. We'll start addressing that problem. Once YOU find us a way to easily do it. Considering that the CIA, FBI, Interpol, all the nations of the world, and the people who have studied Arabic cultures all of their lives can't find a way to reason these people into peace. Yes, there has to be another way. You're a fucking idiot.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Of course not. You kill him to avenge your family and then rationalize later that you did it for the good of society. But do you kill his countrymen? His family? His friends? If you can't find him, do you bomb his house? His city? The whole planet?
In short, if we are a nation that claims to believe in a set of principles above all else, but we are unwilling to fight for these principles, then we are a nation of hypocrites.
If one of your principles is not to kill innocent people, then it may be necessary to not fight in order to uphold that principle.
(I mean, really. Nice view from up on that high horse?)
If you want more security on airplanes, arm the pilots. Or even better yet, let those citizens with concealed carry permits carry their defense with them onto any airplane.
Or don't you trust "ordinary Americans?" And if you do not trust them, why? Is it possible that the American government has indoctrinated most Americans with the idea that they are helpless and that only the Federal government can solve their problems?
And if you are not an American, what expertise do you have that makes you an authority for Americans?
The IPCC has purposely engineered a massive scientific fraud.
What if one or two of the stinger missle launchers that the US provided the afgans, years ago, made it back to the US of A on a freighter ship? What if the best place to launch a missle is when a plane is taking off? What if Stinger missles lock on to engines?
Then it wouldn't be a bomb...
STFU.
Holland has had it's share of planes falling from the sky.
0 ,9 171,1107990322-22329,00.html
Details about todays crash are hard to find but it reminds me of the 1992 bijlmer crash. A cargo plain lost 2 engines and crashed into a building.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/intl/article/
From the link above:
The basic facts surrounding the Oct. 4, 1992 accident are not in dispute. The Boeing 747-200F, carrying three crew, one non-commercial passenger and 114 tons of freight, took off from Amsterdam's Schiphol airport at 6:21 p.m. en route to Tel Aviv. Seven minutes later, both starboard engines ripped loose from the wing. The pilot circled back toward the airport to attempt an emergency landing, but the crippled craft came down in the predominantly immigrant neighborhood of Bijlmer, 13 km east of Schiphol. In an October 1994 report, the Netherlands Aviation Safety Board blamed the crash on mechanical failure due to faulty engine mountings.
Your logic is totally faulty. Terrorists are going to vary their attack profiles, because they know that after an incident, security on that profile will be intensified.
Didn't some firefighter at that recent NYC benefit concert challenge Osama Bin Laden to come "kiss my ass - come get me - i live in Rockaway Beach, Queens..."
i'm sure it's just a coincidence but spooky nevertheless...
Here are some photos
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/news/queens/imagMaybe, but Amtrak is broke. And neither the French nor Japanese have ever tried the equivalent of running high-speed trains from New York to L.A.
I tried to time(1) wget from some newsservers..(only the mainpage html)
www.slashdot.org 1.070s 80.16KB/s
www.cnn.com 0.695s 42.53KB/s
www.nytimes.com 0.935s 108.31KB/s
www.bbc.co.uk 0.851s 227.54KB/s
www.aftonbladet.se 0.291s 325.28KB/s (Swedish news)
www.msnbc.com 3.099s 39.75KB/s (a few 302 which generates extra code)
news.yahoo.com 1.218s 65.56KB/s
results are the best of a few tries...
guess this isn't so scientific but you can get a picture of it..
since i'm located in Sweden it's no big surprise that the Swedish and Uk servers handles my requests fastest.
/K
It's full of factual errors.
Donald Rumsfeld said that we're unlikely to catch Bin Laden.
Bin Laden doesn't matter that much, what matters is that Al Queda is destroyed. Bin Laden will probably be killed, an if not his ability to function will be severely restricted and he will no longer have a friendly national government to protect him.
Many members of the Taliban are no longer in the Taliban and will never be caught
We are only at war with the Taliban in so much that they are Helping Bin Laden. Individual Taliban solders didn't have anything to do with the bombing of NYC. If they defect from the Taliban then they are no longer protecting Bin Laden. So who cares? What matters is that we destroy the ablity of Al Queda to harm the US. Not kill everyone we don't like.
Neither Bin Laden nor the Taliban are Afghani.
The Taliban are pashtoon(sp?) Pashtoon is a large ethnic group in Afghanistan. Many people in Afghanistan identify themselves by their ethnic group. The Taliban was mostly educated in Madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan, but came originally in from Afghanistan.
We are bombing innocent civilians who happened to have the misfortune of being invaded by people who attacked the US as well
It is unfortunate that civilians are being killed, but so far there have only been forty eight confirmed dead civilians. The vast, vast majority of individuals killed in Afghanistan have been members of the Taliban.
Hundreds of thousands, even millions of Afghanis died in the years of strife. The civilian toll caused by our actions are far less then the 'status quo'. Remember, the Taliban kills people for shit like using a computer or adultery. If the taliban is overthrown, there is a possibility that the number of people killed could be made up for in a year or two.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Does anybody want my American Airlines recently bought tickets for free?-)
Yes, of course it's just an assertion. So is every other sociological "fact". I assert that if you asked members of the IRA why they became terrorists, most if not all would cite Britain's history of oppressing the Irish people, including the killing of suspected terrorists. Terrorists are volunteers fighting for a cause they passionately believe in, while most Nazi soldiers were conscripts, so my assertion applies better to terrorists than to Nazis.
American Airlines - prior target.
:(
NYC - prior target.
Outbound flight loaded with fuel presumably.
I've heard their was a meeting of a bunch of arab leaders to discuss the fate of Afghanistan at the UN.
I've also heard (CBC) that Rudy Giuliani (sp?) and Pres Perwez Musharef (sp?) were to tour Ground Zero more or less at the time of the accident.
Also the district where things landed is a shopping district - another symbol of capitalism.
And the eyewitnesses have reported seeing flames from the planes sides. I'm imagining a bomb or a bit of sabotage could easily have caused such an effect.
According to an aviation expert from the USA, interviewed by CBC, the Airbus has a very good safety record and there haven't been (with US carrier's Airbuses anyway) any accidents of this nature.
Now, this doesn't prove anything. In fact, it doesn't even produce a convincing allegation. But it is certainly an interesting combination of facts. If it is mechanical failure not caused by any hostile agency, then it is just an ugly coincidence and NYC is just having more than its fair share of horrendous luck.
I'll be anxious to see how this all comes out in the wash.
And I extend my sympathies to anyone affected directly by this tragedy. Regardless of how it came to be, it is quite horrific.
Tomb
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
and increasing the available pool of terrorists.
They already have a large enough pool.
Besides, they need a lot more then people to wage a war.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
That doesn't invalidate my argument, it just provides a limiting case. If you killed every human on earth apart from one, do you think that person would try to kill you?
It is also possible, even probable that other actions could be taken that would not result in an equal number of people becoming terrorists.
I agree, and I hope the US government looks at all possible courses of action, not just military retaliation. The recent diplomatic pressure on Israel is an encouraging sign.
On the radio just now, some dude in New York was being interviewed and said he saw a truck with a thing sticking out of it like a missle.
This raises the possibility that the plane was shot at from the ground.
Obviously major news organizations will not report this, even if it turns out to be true. Did anyone else hear this report?
Reality has a liberal bias
Maybe we should all fly naked too, so our clothes won't contribute to the fire.
I think this should become an immediate FAA enforced regulation. Like all regulations it must be highly restrictive and have details such as:
Only woman over the age of 18 will fly naked. This will reduce the amount of combustable clothing by roughly 50%.
Those woman of excessive age or weight will be distributed a brown paper bag approximately 6' tall made of recycled materials upon baggage check in.
Any woman uncomfortable with being nude will be given a selection of clothing as part of the cost of their plane ticket that includes thongs, g-strings, teddys, etc.
Extremly bitchy, feminist woman will be gagged and put on patrol in the cargo area to check for bombs.
Men who insist the above rules are too sexist will have to join their female partners by wearing raw fire-proof fiberglass insulation outfits with floppy ears and a tail.
These regulations will serve an added bonus of distracting terrorists and relieving tension on flights. Furthermore, it will contribute to the overall wellness of our economy as middle-aged men by the thousands will begin purchasing round trip tickets to random locations as well as drinks on those flights and the occasional hotel room during layovers.
That would hardly be reassuring, would it? It is well known that in spite of the increased security propaganda, it remains relatively easy to sneak explosives aboard a commercial jet. Best guesses are that about 5% of checked luggage is screened.
Maintenance, on the other hand, is still supposed to be impeccable. If this plane went down due to mechanical failure, that is yet another catastrophic vulnerability uncovered.
Takahashi Rumiko made beats! DON, taku, DON, taku. . .
No. A better analogy is: "if someone car-jacks your sister and drives off a cliff, should you shoot his mom?"
Should we have not fought the Civil War? [or WW2 or Revolutionary War]Afghanistan in 2001 is much Much MUCH more like Vietnam in 1961 than it is like Europe in 1941 or America in 1861. Think about that.
This post is so full of factual errors it's astounding.
But someone already addressed them all before me.
I'm just suggesting a new moderation category.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Somehow I think the radical Islamist point of view won't follow these points.
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? - Joshua (Wargames)
With all the technology we have now, how come we are still looking for that stupid black box? How come the information that is in the black box is not routed wirelessly directly to the airport control towers?
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
Maybe this crash is a bug: there *were* 255 people on the plane...
// something horrible
const unsigned char NOT_A_PLANE = 0xff;
...
if (pcount == NOT_A_PLANE) {
}
Yeah, right. Glad I don't write avionic software.
I'm having a great deal of trouble coming to grips with the reality that hundreds of people killed on the plane and on the ground by a mechanical problem, strange air or pilot error could be, in a strange way, good news.
How much things change.
Now comes the hard part: waiting for an answer.
Remember the frenzy after Pan-Am 800? We even had a former presidential press secretary proclaiming that it had been shot down by a missile.
Only a long and painstaking investigation revealed the problem with sparks in the central fuel tank on 747's.
Just as I hope that Congress doesn't go ballistic passing oppressive laws for our protection, I hope that the NTSB will act only as quickly as a proper investigation will allow.
The stakes are so high now.
This [salon.com]article is saying that GW is now meeting with his advisors about whether or not there is enough of a chance of this being a terrorist attack that it warrants shutting down US airspace again. At this time, they have made no decision on the matter.
My personal thought on the matter is that the only way we are going to know if this was a terrorist attack is:
A) Somebody claims responisbility (not too likely)
B) Another plane goes down
C) The NTSB comes back (after a couple of weeks) and says it was a bomb
It seems to me that the government is either just going to have to wait and see if it happens again before they make that decision OR, they could shut everything down and start searching engines for bombs, but, in light of the fact that there is no evidence that this is terrorist-related, isn't shutting it all down giving in to terrorism?
http://firehouse.com/news/2001/10/25_FHkiss.html
Check it yourself if you don't believe.
"FDNY firefighter Michael Moran touched more people than he could know with his words to Osama bin Laden at last weekend's benefit Concert for New York.
He summed it up for everybody when he spoke his message to bin Laden: "Kiss my royal Irish ass!"
Moran's words drew wild applause from the crowd, and have continued to draw attention from others as the media spreads his story.
The firefighter said he was sitting in the audience at Madison Square Garden,shortly before his turn to go up on stage to introduce a band. While he waited, he kept thinking about how much he wanted to say something for those that he lost in the September 11 attacks: his brother Battalion Chief John Moran, 12 firefighters from his own Ladder 3 and Battalion 6, and about 20 players from the fire department's football team.
He said his now famous quote comes from an old expression used in his neighborhood of Rockaway, Queens, which he hasn't spoken in a very long time. But the phrase popped into his head Saturday, when the time was right."
There is audio too.
it would be very irresponsable for us to jump to any conclusions. So nobody should be saying that it was, or was not, a terrioist attack.
Its true that planes do crash, and it is possible that this is a conicidence. But given the recent events, it would be just plain dumb to not take into consideration terriosm.
The AirBus A300 is a very reliable aircraft, and has been in use for 30 years.
We need to take the time to look at the facts, once the smoke clears.
"Flee at once, all is discovered."
Kinda hard to do much more when the Taliban are SHOOTING at the airdrop planes, and confiscating (where they can) what little there is to feed soldiers...
There is very little we can do while we are at war and the Taliban (who does NOT care about the Afghani people) is still in control.
Oh yeah - The Taliban make shit up (counting military deaths as civilian, denying damage, etc.), but you would believe them over the US I suppose.
We do need to bomb the crap out of them, and send in ground troops to clean up what's left. If we don't, these terrorists will just keep at it forever, killing innocent people everywhere.
Oh yeah, they want to kill YOU too, not just our government, because of what you represent. They don't care what you actually believe.
Perhaps they've set their servers up to switch over to light content automatically during traffic spikes (wouldn't be very hard to do).
http://www.nydailynews.com/2001-10-22/News_and_Vie ws/City_Beat/a-129389.asp
well since an engine fell a little while before. I'd assume the cause would be lack of an engine.
That'll do it, y'know.
Which motivates them more, though? Poverty or death?
Say 'Rich Americans are keeping you poor' and some will undoubtedly be motivated to kill Americans.
Say 'Rich Americans are killing your family and friends' and I'd bet rather more will want to kill Americans.
I'm not sure _what_ I'd have done, but I can see an awful lot of negative consequences to what we've done so far.
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
Airliners can often/usually survive the loss of an engine - but obviously, the loss of an engine during take-off is much worse. There's also a huge difference between an engine shutting down for whatever reason and an engine exploding and falling off - the second will cause all sorts of damage to the control surfaces, wing, etc.
Soo... how come no one's talking about Stingers yet? Is everyone taking those 5-point don't-jump-to-conclusions posts seriously? Gimme a break, those are karma whores, through and through. Speculation is where the fun is.
Here's something to think about, even if it turns out to be completely unrelated to what happened today: the resistance against the Soviets had shoulder-launched SAMs. They were trained how to use them, and used them effectively.
Commercial aircraft take off on very predictable routes. It should be pretty easy to find an optimum firing position within a few miles of an airport, and park your car. You can study the pattern for weeks if you like. Then a plane goes right over your, you open the trunk, take out your Stinger, and shoot the slow-moving low-altitude plane (with nice hot engines at full takeoff power) in the back.
Total security checkpoints you had to go through: zero, except when you smuggled the US-made SAM back into the country. (Or maybe you can even make your own right here -- the Sidewinder budget in the 50s was supposedly really low, and stuff that was cheap in the 50s is nearly free today). And you can do the shooting so fast, there might not even be any witnesses.
Defending against that sort of thing is going to be tricky.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I really don't understand why this is marked as flamebait. It seems like a genuine post to me, not even particuarly unreasonable.
What most anti-war protestors object to is killing a bunch of people who had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks. For instance, it's estimated that 100,000-1,000,000 people will starve as a result of US/UK bombing of Afghanistan. This is not the estimate of those who will starve, it is the difference between the numbers who would have died anyway, and the number who will die now. The assassination of the leaders of those responsible would be just fine with lot's of people who object to the "war" (myself included). Unfortunately this is not very easy to accomplish.
Just a couple of quick questions for you here: how many of the terrorists were Afghans ?
where did the majority of the terrorists come from ?
which country provides most the funding for AlQueada ?
(hint: 0,Saudi-12/18,Saudi)
So, given the above, how many dead civilian Afghanis would be acceptable in your opinion ? Seriously, I'm curious, is it
a) "all of them",
b) 10,000,000-1,000,000
c) 1,000,000-100,000
d) 100,000-10,000
e) 10,000-1,000
f) 1-1000
g) none
Personally, I would opt for (e),(f) or maybe even (d) *if* I was convinced this would prevent another Sept 11 or worse.
And I guess the related question is: for what objectives are you prepare to kill that number of people ?
Would that be acceptable in order to also achieve death of Osama Bin Laden, or OBL + most of Al-Queada, or OBL+AlQueada+Taliban, or what ?
> we need to stop being so... law abiding? moral?
What I'm curious about is where you got the impression that the US was doing those things anyway ? What laws do you think the IS abiding by ? On the moral front, I agree with right to defend oneself, I'm just not convinced that this is what's going on here. Are you starting to feel safer now that some Afghans have been blown up too ? Do you believe this reduces the threat of future terrorist attacks ?
This isn't meant to be rehetorical. I'm just puzzled. I'll answer hawksish questions in response if mine are answered.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
While the timing of the crash (just after takeoff) does seem to indicate some kind of mechanical failure this might not be the case. If a bomb was hooked to an altimiter (altimeters work off air pressure) set to explode at a certain altitude and it was placed within a pressurized cargo hold the pressurizationg of the hold might have detonated it. An explosion in a cargo hold next to a fuel line might have caused the line to light causing the burning engine that was reported. Alternatively in light of the footage of the concourd with an engine on fire the blowing out of the airbus's engine may have been an act of sabotage. \
Steve
We've got some reliable linkage online here. Check comments there for further updates.
Got Rhinos?
... that one freaked me out for a while
T
I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered. - George Best
Live you life as you always have. Go to work, raise your kids, spend your money, and be happy until given a legitimate reason not to be.
No, we haven't been programmed to be happy little consumers, have we?
The A300 was the first (and only?) passenger aircraft which is entirely under software control. This is know as "fly by wire", where mechanical controls have all been replaced by a data bus, sensors, and actuators. One possible problem is that if software developers didn't anticipate every failure mode, an unexpected loss of critical sensors could cause the control software to become confused, causing a further spiraling loss of control. Investigating failure in an A300 can not discount the contribution of software failure.
Good point. Let's feed the terrorists and send them weapons. That will make them like us. Oh wait, we already did that and...
I live in new york.. can the planes go drop somewhere else for once
Just saw a press release about the News search feature on Alltheweb. Very handy, now that cnn.com is down (at least it has been for me during the better part of this day...)
Check out this news search for 'queens plane crash'. Hit #1 was updated 27 minutes ago. A tragic day with another tragic event, but a nice discovery that I wanted to share...
Sandman
No, we haven't been programmed to be happy little consumers, have we?
Beats the shit out of the alternative programming choices out there.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
Just wondering, is a SAM really necessary to bring down a taking-off A-300? Or could you do the same with a high powered rifle on a take-off situation. (you'd have to be a damn good aim)
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
I heard that they threatened to fill our restaurants and stores with fatty foods and to start selling little sticks of flammable plant products that they will use to poison us with choking gas.
Now I hear about all of these people dying of heart attacks and cancer, and it must be those damn terrorists again!
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
It is foolish to rule out all possibilities. It is also foolish to completely ignore all of the blaring coincidences.
Live you life as you always have. Go to work, raise your kids, spend your money, and be happy until given a legitimate reason not to be.
No, we haven't been programmed to be happy little consumers, have we?
Why do you assume that by coming to this conclusion you have to be a brainwashed product of the media? Is it far fetched that one might come to this conclusion on thier own after weighing against many alternatives?
Can't people go to work, raise kids, spend money, and be happy in addition to being generous with thier time and money for those less fortunate or for a legitimate cause?
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
Several times in your Anonymous message, you indicate it is okay to kill innocents (future soldiers, entire cities) in pursuit of your own country's goals. You are unprincipled, arrogant, and cruel. Sound like anyone we know?
Telling someone they should kill themselves because you find their speech annoying... it really points to how much diversity in opinion you are willing to tolerate, doesn't it?
Reply with your name next time. Coward.
Let's use the same analogy with crime.
Let's not put criminals in jail because it just creates more criminals. Let's stop the cycle of crime and jail.
Makes good sense, right?
The Taliban are not going to let us come in and arrest Osama and his cohorts (which just happen to be the Taliban itself.) We have no other choice if we want to deal with him and we HAVE to deal with him unless we are willing to roll over and let EVERY terrorist group have their way with us.
I want my daughter to grow up in a world where she can feel reasonably safe from the likes of Osama. We MUST take him and all his associates out.
Oh I see...
Now Bush will try to bomb Airbus factories because they "bombed" NY...
What an incredibly naive statment. When a fanatic wants to kill you, talking to him to "end the cycle of violence" only gives him more opportunities to kill you. When Hitler tried to take over the world, did we try to stop the "cycle of violance" by talking to him? HELL NO! We responded with force. We killed the enemy. That's how you end the cycle of violence.
-- Will program for bandwidth
How about searching for "bomb" on this list:
Airline disasters 1920-2000
Now which seems the greater likelyhood to you - accident or terrorism? YOU do the math!
This may be a little of topic, but please bear with me. I have been trying to get any news about the crash on all the major news websites. Thank goodness for Slashdot. All the other "news" organizations are swamped. One would think, in this age of the internet and the relatively cheap hardware out there, that the major news sites would be able to handle the traffic of a serious disaster. Remember 9/11? Did they learn nothing from the sudden influx of traffic? People want to know what is going on. These sites claim to be news leaders. Yet anytime there is a serious need or desire for news, the site goes down.
Sorry I had to vent.
We've got your news coverage right here.
Got Rhinos?
Specifications
Missile Type: 2 stage, low altitude
Length: (missile) 1.52 m
Diameter: (missile) 0.070 m
Wing span: 0.091 m
Weight: (missile (at launch)) 10.1 kg
(launcher (plus missile)) 13.3 kg
(launcher (complete)) 15.7 kg
(battery coolant unit) 0.4 kg
(beltpack IFF system (including connecting lead)) 2.6 kg
(grip-stock) 2 kg
Propulsion: solid fuel ejector and dual-thrust boost/sustainer rocket motors
Guidance: FIM-92A passive IR homing; FIM-92B/C passive IR/UV homing
Warhead: 1 kg HE blast smooth-case fragmentation with time-delay contact fuze
Max speed: M2.2
Max range: 8,000 m
Max effective range:
(FIM-92A) greater than 4,000 m
(FIM-92B/C) 4,800 m
Min effective range: 200 m
Max altitude:
(FIM-92A) 3,500 m
(FIM-92B/C) 3,800 m
Min altitude: effectively ground level
Launcher: man-portable single-round disposable with reusable grip-stock
The plane was carrying 246 passengers and 9 crew.
The Dominican Republic claimed that 150 of the passengers on the flight were its citizens.
Both statements were cautioned as 'preliminary'
Which takes us down a whole other path (and a whole other huge arguement). Just exactly what do we do. According to the Washington Post we've shown the Taliban evidence of bin Landen and his boys' involvement in the Cole bombings, as well as the African embassey bombings, yet they haven't turned him over. I'd guess it would be safe to say that they would take the same tact this time. So the few choices I see are keep asking "pretty please", try some sort of embargo and put political pressure on Afghanistan (but since no one in the international community except the likes Saudi and Pakistan have even recognized them as a governing body I seriously doubt that would work), or you take action to smoke the guy out.
Of course, the orig statement from which I replied was the one equating bombing Afghanistan with airport security (or the lack there of), which is a bogus argument. Airport security and the actions in Afghanistan are orthogonal.
an engine fell from the plane some distance from the fuselage.
Uuhh... clear this up?
Why bother.
I work in the airline industry and around here every bagage is at least screened using X-rays. If it doesn't get explosive it at least catch electronical device. And "opaque" bagage are set aside for torough checking so forget using a X-Ray stopping cover to hide anything.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
For an airworthiness directive of this magnitude, Airbuses should have been grounded until they were fixed. Note the addition of this clause:
/only/ reason a faulty plane would be in the air is if it was on its way to be fixed. It wouldn't surprise me, however, that people would fly these things without being compliant; I'd expect that somebody's going to loose their FAA ratings.
(c) Special flight permits may be issued in accordance with sections Secs. 21.197 and 21.199 of the Federal Aviation Regulations (14 CFR 21.197 and 21.199) to operate the airplane to a location where the requirements of this AD can be accomplished.
This means that the
io hymen hymnaee io
io hymen hymnaee
And by looking at the [negative] score of what you posted in the past, you are most likely doing that right now. Instead of trying to fuel hate fire, how about making well constructed opinion post ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
This is obviously a tragic accident? I'm sorry, but I didn't think the investigation was over yet. Yes, hopefully this turns out to be some type of mechanical failure or something, but until then, statements like "this is obviously a tragic accident" are just as erroneous and speculative as "this was obviously taken down by a stinger missile". Even if the investigation concludes that it was an "accident", that's not completely satisfactory. A good sabotage would look like an accident.
Great. What a nice thing to say on Veteran's Day. Asshole.
Why were there two crash sites?
k .c rash.gallery/12.jpg
CNN has pictures of two crash sites and they state one is from the plane and one site is the engines...
"American Airlines Flight 587 crashed on takeoff in the New York City borough of Queens. Two hundred firefighters and 44 trucks were dispatched to the scene of what New York Mayor Giuliani says are two crash sites -- one of the plane and one of an engine."
If you look at the engine's crash site it's not "crash site" but more of just where the engine landed. Did anyone see any overhead shots of the Queens area on the news? Are there two burning areas? Did the whole plane break-up before hitting the ground?
http://i.cnn.net/cnn/interactive/us/0111/newyor
Also - all terrosists that we are suspecting have beef with America(ns) Why attack a flight that is majority Dom Rep. citizens? Maybe this could be a cleverly disguised assination of some high powered Domincan Republic drug overlord / politican / leader / rebel?
Jesse Wolfe Sr. Manager Systems Integration
The concorde accident was caused by a plane piece which damaged the tire and blew , which the subsequently damaged the tank. Furthermore the design and technology behind both plane are different, and have what , 30 years of difference in their design. They weren't even designed by the same team of ingenieur. Their only common point is probably that they aren't american plane.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Terrorism doesn't have to hit a "big target". If this was terrorism, it was most likely sabotage, which would seem possible, given accounts of smoke trailing from the engine prior to the apparent explosion. Someone on the ground could have tampered with it to pretty much guarantee that it would fall out of the sky, but not know when or where. The other possible terrorism angle is a missle, like a stinger. It would seem likely that someone would have noticed this. I've actually heard an "eye-witness report" of someone who saw something sticking out of a truck. How's that for rumor material? Anyway, the point is that terrorism doesn't have to be precise or hit big targets, like it was on 9/11, in order to be effective.
Would somebody *please* mod this moron down? There were no terrorists involved!
Folks,
:-(
While a lot of people a angling towards the idea of a terrorist action, I think there's one possibility that no one has yet discussed: mechanical failure caused by a catastrophic bird strike.
Far-fetched? Not if you know something about the geography and ecology at JFK Airport and Jamaica Bay. To the west and south of JFK Airport is a very large marshy area that serves as a sanctuary for migratory birds (plus some native waterfowl). This means at this time of the year--when birds are migrating south for the winter--there will be millions of birds out in this sanctuary.
What happens when you have flocks of birds rising by the thousands getting in the way of the flight path of an airliner taking off out into Jamaica Bay? My guess is that American Airlines Flight 857 may have flown in to a very large flock of birds just after take off, mean the plane's two GE CF6-80 engines may be ingested 40 or more birds per engine somewhere between 1 and 2 seconds. That many birds being ingested will seriously damage the front engine blades, and such a severe bird ingestion may be enough to cause a catastrophic fan section failure, which can spew out very sharp engine fan blades at supersonic speeds, possibly breaking through the engine nacelle and hitting the fuselage, wing flap control lines and wing fuel tanks, which explains the fire on the wings that eyewitnesses saw.
Eyewitnesses said that the plane flew very low before the plane lost one of its engines and then crashed down at a sharp angle. This sounds consistent with the plane suffering a catastrophic bird strike.
If anyone remembers, some years ago an E-3A Sentry AWACS plane crashed aftering taking off from Elmendorf AFB in Anchorage, AK after the engines failed due to a catastrophic bird ingestion problem. AA Flight 857 may have suffered a similar unfortunate fate.
The plane crashed shortly after 9 a.m. and thick, black smoke could be scene in televised reports.
/. effect goes further than just bandwidth... looks like Taco's writing for Yahoo.
Apparently, the
Please note: I am not trying to be disrespectful in the face of death; I simply find that a little humor can cheer everyone up.
If we allow these criminals to alter our way of life to the point that we cease to function, or regulate ourselves into and Orwellian nightmare then we may as well lie down and die.
Live your life as you always have.
Not only should we live normally so the terrorists don't have control, we should live normally in order to have control over the terrorists.
Think about it: If they really could blow up the US, if they really could take over, they would have done it by now. Their goal is to spread their twisted philosophy everywhere, right? So why haven't they taken control? The terrorist haven't done this because they aren't strong enough to take over the United States. So they're playing these games with Americans in order to frighten us into submission.
9/11 was the first life-altering tragedy for many Americans. Time to crawl out from under the bed. Use that fear and energy to do better in your everyday tasks than ever before. It is our way of life, our freedom, that these people want to destroy, simply because their repressive ideas can't survive long in a free American society.
Remember at the end of The Matrix, when the agents threw everything they could against Neo? Neo was untouched by the agents, because he realized how powerful he really was for the first time. The agents who weren't eliminated ran away.
I'm not requesting anyone to stop bullets in their tracks. I am requesting everyone to find the strength within them to overcome any fear or anxiety these events are provoking in us. Realize how strong you are, and you can do just about anything.
Rebel against the terrorists. Live normally.
Certainly. Slaughtering conscripts does make a significant impact, if nothing else for their wifes and children. Exterminating a culture? Impact by definition.
Read your American history. Barbary pirates. Nazis. Mexican raids. Etc. A lack of response guarantees failure.
My American history tells the story of a nation that has often, with some notable exceptions, put short term gains before ideals like democracy. It has been that way, but it doesn't need to be that way. I hope the future will bring us an America that stands up for what's right rather than what's profitable in the short run. I agree with you that doing nothing isn't an alternative though.
Discussing both options like you've proposed, how does not doing anything not kill more people abroad and in the US?
I fail to see why not waging a war against the Talibans means doing nothing. Here's my suggestion for doing something:
* Release the evidence that supposedly binds Bin Laden to the September 11'th attacks. The public as well as the Taliban have the right to see that the accusations are well founded.
* Identify and bring terrorists to justice, using force if necessary. Courtrooms and jails are better than assassinations in dark alleys.
* Inform the Afghan public about democracy and how they can live a better life if they topple the Taliban.
* Increase cooperation between intelligence agencies. Think of better security measures that doesn't infringe too much on our civil liberites. Use the courts to seize terrorist funds.
* Ally with democracies, not dictators. At least, don't support totalitarian states.
Appeasement to make "other people like us" is guaranteed to fail, and furthermore, makes dirty bastards like you as guilty as the killers.
Are you saying that by suggesting an alternative strategy for combating terrorism that doesn't require the deaths of thousand of conscripted kids and fathers, as well as hundreds of innocent civilans, I'm somehow to be considered as a terrorist myself? With that definition, your quest for infinite justice will be long indeed. And if you aren't lucky, perhaps you too will succumb as part of the "unintended damage" somewhere along the way.
That shouldn't take all that much time. Seems like we are just not putting enough effort into it, instead letting the Northern Alliance fight most of the battles for us.
We just need to get him, and get him alive, to get all the information he has in his head. Drag him over here alive, start pumping him full of truth serum, and that will be more information on the terrorist networks in a day than we'll get in a year of normal covert "investigating".
Pick the four most likely areas we think he is in, drop sleep gas or something in mass quantities on those areas, drop in a monstrous amount of troops, grab every person that looks vaguely like him, lock them up somewhere, and then figure out which one is the real Bin Laden. Sort of a macabre "Where's Waldo" game.
Is is just me, or is Step One of the "War on Terrorism" taking way too long?
When you have termites in your house - even just a few, you eradicate them to avoid them taking everything over and your house falling down. That's the current situation.
One should not compare Human Beings who presumably have reasons for their extreme actions to termites. Human Beings, unless they are threatening you with imminent death (which, irregardless of your irrational fear OBL is not), deserve better than that. Attitudes such as yours only continue the cycle of violence.
I do not advocate allowing ourselves to be trampled upon, but different circumstances require different methods. We are not fighting an army, we are fighting a few very desperate people. Take away their fear of being eradicated by us, and they will stop terrorizing us. When we stop supporting terrorists of our own, terrorists will leave us alone.
Resist the cycle of violence and hate.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
If it was so "easy" there would be far more of those device on every plane to spread terror. Probably far more economical than train people to fly plane to strike two tower. I am not saying that the article at salon.com is wrong , only that it leaves probably important fact. Like how do look such explosive device with a detonator inside on a Xray film ? Probably suspect , something you do not await in an electronic device. But then again that is only my opinion, not fact. I can only say you that from what I know of airport security it is at least enough.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The BBC earlier today was on low graphics mode (which I like) due to "unprecedented traffic" to their web site. Tell me why are they getting more traffic today than they would on say Sept. 11 or 12?? I understand people are interested to learn about another potential terrorist attack, but this situation was announced almost from the start as likely to be an accident or mechanical failure. The only people that died were the people on the plane. Could it be that more people are home because of the Veterans Day holiday or because they are laid off work? Just thought it was odd today would be their highest traffic day ever.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
---So here's deliberate, appropriate action: grab dropping stocks! Prevent further damage to the economy, take importants assets out of the hands of incompetent handlers, and make a little something for yourself.----
These sorts of arguements are so misguided that it's hard to even know where to begin.
Spending money on one thing, instead of on another thing, can't help or hurt the economy. We can't get richer just by buying things from each other.
There's no justifiable reason to buy stocks other than that you like holding those particular stocks (you actually value THEM). Buying a stock transfers some stock to you from somebody else, enriches all the current owners of that stock, and hurts all the potential buyers of that stock BY EXACTLY THE SAME AMOUNT. Leaving on net, no benefit or loss to the economy as a whole. Patriotism doesn't turn a bad investment into a good investment. If you think the stocks might perk up in the future, and you're willing to take the risk that they won't buy them. If not, not. It's that simple.
What an incredibly naive statment. When a fanatic wants to kill you, talking to him to "end the cycle of violence" only gives him more opportunities to kill you. When Hitler tried to take over the world, did we try to stop the "cycle of violance" by talking to him? HELL NO! We responded with force. We killed the enemy. That's how you end the cycle of violence.
Contrary to popular belief, terrorists are not Hitler, nor are they comparable to Hitler. Terrorists are terrorists by choice, because of some percieved wrong against them. Take away their reason for terrorizing and they stop. Hitler was a madman who managed to subvert an entire country. As another poster pointed out, McVeigh would not have bombed OKC had we not first murdered the Branch Davidians in Waco. When you do such things to begin a cycle of violence and hate, it does not end until you let it end. People like you, unfortunately, choose to not let it end.
Also contrary to popular belief, killing millions of innocent people in Germany did nothing to end the cycle of violence and hate. Nor, it turns out, did nuking Japan, although I still believe that given the information we had at the time, it was the best course of action known to our leaders. A very unfortunate one. Until we learn to stop killing each other over petty differences and lose this drive for "revenge" (which, btw, does not bring back, or otherwise let the dead rest more easily) the cycle of violence and hate will continue.
Resist the cycle of violence and hate.
P.S. Free clue for you: It is not the "cycle of violence," it is the "cycle of violence and hate." Without hate, the violence would stop. The only way to stop hate is to stop violence, and the only way to stop violence is to stop hate. Sometimes I think we are really less evolved than most "wild" animals. We certainly act like it.
-Nathan
Care about freedom?
Become a card carrying member of the GOA.
An excellent example of using moderator privilege to spout political opinion.
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can't kill the beast.
The Taliban noticed that Amercian support for bombing Afghanistan was waning so they quickly arranged to down another airliner to assure the continued support of the American public for the current war campaign.
2]
Replace "Taliban" with "American right-Wing Nutcases" and repeat 1].
3]
Replace "Taliban" with "your favorite violent lunatic group" and repeat 1].
4]
It was a 'normal' tragic accident.
5]
No one actually knows yet, but once the media feeding frenzy ends we'll find out from some calm and boring official.
Anarchists never rule
IMO bin laden claimed responisbiliry yesterday so perhaps that was a signal
Where, in your opinion did he do such a thing?
Kapton wiring, its a hidden secret within the industry that Kapton wiring was BANNED by the military but is currently in use by commercial companies.
- 14 -wiring.htm
And its also caused many incidents.
http://www.iasf.net/kapton_wiring.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/money/biztravel/2001-06
http://www.iasa.com.au/twaletter.html
http://www.iasa.com.au/BOEINGFISR.html
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
It is actually quite normal for planes to crash every now and then, therefore it is most likely to be an accident.
..
Before 9/11, a plane crash used to be a more or less guaranteed headline. The PA crash on 9/11 was the first major airline crash I know of since CNN went on the air that *didn't* get at least a full day of "breaking news" coverage. I remember that as the thing that really gave me a sense of scale to the NYC/Pentagon attacks -- a crash like that was a minor byline to the day's events, and only really got airtime because it was related to the attacks. One measure of how 9/11 changed our perception is that so many [more] people now automatically think 'terrorism' when an airliner crashes.
Maybe it's just an accident. I agree with other folks here -- they do happen, all the FAA's and NTSB's best efforts to the contrary
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
First off, you're nuts. I can gaurantee that ADDING drag in the form of a parachute will not increase the glide distance of a modern airliner.
b) 10,000,000-1,000,000
c) 1,000,000-100,000
d) 100,000-10,000
e) 10,000-1,000
f) 1-1000
g) none
You forgot: h) cowboy neal
Help find a cure for cancer!
OK. So that makes it sound like a terrorist, but not so fast...
Here is my logic: A high explosive device that was able to tear the wing off would have caused some pretty spectacular effects and not caused the fires that were seen. So it was probably not a high explosive.
Low explosives are not much more of a candidate either-- it would be really hard to make a dangerous LE device on a plane.
However, there is a class of explosives that would work-- high blast pressures, fires, and low ranges: fuel-air explosives, or FAE's. Note that the fuel has to go through the wing to the engine, so it has to go into the wing. If there was a leak, an explosion could have caused everything that was seen.
So I think that a fuel leak around the junction of the wing was responsible along with a spark, excess heat, or something. So one is back to accident or sabotage.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I've heard of this happening before, and I've heard of the "chicken cannon" project.
IANAP (pilot), but I would think something could be done to protect the engines.....especially if , as you say,
To the west and south of JFK Airport is a very large marshy area that serves as a sanctuary for migratory birds (plus some native waterfowl)
and other planes have been brought down by this before. I'm not saying this theory is wrong, but I am wondering why the reaction seems to be "well, looks like this one ran into some birds....I guess that'll happen sometimes."
I'm imagining a cone of some sort, but I'm not an engineer (yet).
Regardless, it shows last-minute straight-thinking on the pilot's part. The fire on the ground could have been much worse.
of course. You think anyone over 20 has the time to look through these groups? :-)
It's rather simple: systematic extermination of the entire human race.
We're all badly behaved little monkeys, really, and we're not going to stop biting each other any time soon. So, before we kill ourselves AND the only known chunk of rock that can successfully sustain diverse and plentiful life, let's just stop all the fightin' and the fussin' and start the exterminatin'.
Or at least get a bunch of those Euphio machines. We'll torture Vonnegut until he tells us how.
Since I don't hate Muslims, I don't see how your silly ideas can make a difference. You need to talk to the extremists who hate Westerners for whatever reason. I suggest you fly over to Afghanistan and personally talk to them. I'm sure they will listen to reason.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Well, while it is possible that it's a large sea bird, it's unlikely to be a Stinger.
Far easier to use a fire and forget anti-tank weapon - the profile of a plane on takeoff would allow for this, and it's fairly easy to buy these in a number of states, especially at gun shows with minimal forged (or legit) documentation and then pop it in a trunk to transport.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Dick, lets launch some tomahawks! I like their perdy smoke trails...
-
No, National ID cards wouldn't have stopped this if a terrorist attack.
But it points out a few things, however.
One is that not federalizing airport screening personnel is really dumb. As is not paying them decent wages.
Another is that a good terrorist group will always use slightly different attacks, but that perhaps our overreliance on planes is not a good thing. In fact, why are we not asking ourselves how soon instead of if we will be building a nationwide high-speed rail system for passengers and freight.
And yet one more is - why are we not screening all baggage, no matter the source, no matter which country.
There are things we can do. That we know would help. And there are things we aren't doing, for political reasons that have no basis in reality.
For the rest, let's remain calm. It's still safer to fly today than to drive.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
It is clear from what is being reported in the media that something occured just after takeoff causing mechanical damage including the complete seperation of one engine, and a very quick subsequent loss of control and crash.
There are two general possibilities for the cause:
1. Accident
The flight encountered some unexpected mechanical problem not caused by the intentional action of any person. For example, the engine could have had a catastrophic mechanical failure of its fan, causing loss of the engine and possibly additional damage to the body or wing which made the plane uncontrollable. Similar incidents have caused other jet planes to crash.
2. Intentional act
Someone intentionally caused the damage to the plane. This could happen numerous ways, but the most likely possibility is that of a bomb going off inside the body of the plane, producing enough debris to take out one engine.
Only the detailed technical forensic analysis of the wreckage will conclusively point to one possibility or the other.
If the crash of a fully-fueled jumbo jet onto a residential area of New York City was not an intentional act by the 9/11 terrorists, then they are unbelievably lucky that fate has caused an incident which perfectly matches what they would have liked to accomplish themselves. So unbelievable, that I can't believe it was just an accident.
To both the ACs and the Moderators
So much for rewarding those reporting breaking news. It was the best available when reported. Look at the time of posting before flaming a poor soul.
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
Wrong, buddy. An airplane is a realy heavy thing in midair moving forward really fast. Its wings aren't big enough (aren't generating enough lift) to let it glide at low speeds. However, the addition of 4 1600 pound foil type chutes (think aerial demonstrators) greatly increases the airfoil surface available, and could let the plane generate enough lift to increase its glide distance. It's a question of getting your forward speed to keep you up, not slowing down your downward fall directly.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
I agree, but i also think we should get rid of Bush first. You never know, it could just be a jinksed (spelling?) presedent thats causing the trouble. No need to ditch the whole world without checking.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Thank you for the correction.
Given that neither reaction nor inaction will prevent further attacks,
I don't think you can take that as a given.
but consider these points.
Which course (action or inaction) will encourage contempt and future aggression? (Clue: Neville Chamberlain, Bin Ladens comments after we retreated from Somolia)
Which course makes killing Americans a risk free and easy way to advance your political cause (whatever it might be)
Which course leaves our avowed enemies (which you concede WILL attack us) free to stage those future attacks without interference.
As for responding to your points:
Which course will polarise world opinion, leading previously moderate people to support radical organisations? (Clue: look at Pakistan.)
Answer: Inaction - Yes, lets look at Pakistan for a clue. A nation that supported the Taliban and even Al Queada and a regime that has a lot of sympathy to both. Yet they actively support us - why? I think the answer is our likely "action" if they had continued support for radical organisations. As for the Pakistani "street" where there is unrest (though not really very much by Pakistani standards) as long as individual support for radical organisations is going to organisations that are harrassed by every government, without a safe haven and ineffectual - who cares.
Which course will kill innocent people abroad, in addition to those who have already died in the US? (Clue: look at Afghanistan.)
Answer: Inaction - Al Queada as a particular organisation has as a STATED OBJECTIVE the acquisition AND USE of Chemical, Biological and Nuclear weapons to pursue a holy war against all infidels on formerly Muslim lands (According to bin Laden this includes Spain by the way) - given time and the safety of Afghanistan they will succeed in this objective. Even in Afghanistan direct civillian casualites from US attacks pale in comparison to past attrocities by all other parties to the conflict - Casualties from famine is the real threat and is a powerful argument for a MORE aggresive attack that will put a larger portion of the population behind UF lines where aid can more readily reach them. The increased attention the war is generating is probably a boon to the millions of Afghan refugees *with were already* in Pakistan and Iran.
Which course will perpetuate a cycle of violence and be used to justify further attacks? (Clue: look at the Balkans, Northern Ireland, Israel and Palestine.)
Inaction: All of the "clues" you provide are instances of people with different ethnic groups occupying the same ground where no lasting "victory" is possible - that is not the case with the US and any muslim land unless you think we are planning to colonise Afghanistan. Why not other "clues" of the inevitable "cycle of violence" war must always create? Look at the "cycle of violence" between the US and it's past enemies: England, Canada (at the time part of the British Empire) Mexico, Spain, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Vichy France, Korea (& China), Russia (a cold war but "enemies" none the less) even Vietnam which we completely botched but I still wouldn't characterise American and Vietnamese relations as a "cycle of violence" like the other "clues" you mentioned. In some of these cases our relationships are actually better for having had a war - can you imagine that we would be as friendly as we are with Germany, Italy and Japan if we had not gone to war against them? And there was a *massively* greater number of civilian casualties, displacement, ethnic expulsions, genocide & atrocities to feed a cycle of violence in those cases.
Hmmmm . . . your solution seems not to involve my own death . . . not bad, not bad.
I, personally, think it's interesting how clear a choice America was given in 2000--Mr. Environment, Mr. Clinton-Style Peace Lover, Al Gore, vs. Mr. America First, Bushie. Of course, the sad thing is, most people didn't care until the big Chad Crisis.
Gore may have been too namby-pamby, too soft, too wimpish, to have effective dealt with this, but I don't think Bush's hard line will be effective in the long run either.
I guess systematically wiping out mankind might be
a bit of a sticky wicket; it'd be hard to do right, and of course, there's all those bleeding hearts who wouldn't want to die. Still . . don't let the terrorists destroy civilization! Let's destroy it ourselves, first! Then what do they do? Crash an airplane into *our* caves? Bwa ha ha ha!
And either way, whether we're killing everyone or merely rubblizing ourselves, think of the economic benefits! Either project would require so much effort that unemployment would vanish! Come to think of it, what if we just kill the unemployed?
If Al Qaida thinks they can solve problems by killing people, boy howdy, they ain't seen nothing yet.
That's what Opera's "user mode" is for. (3rd icon along next to the address bar).
Your principle, stamping out violence and hate in the world by resisting your own impulses of that nature, and thus theoretically shunting a feedback cycle, is noble.
Alas, applying a theory without fully understanding its context can be just as fatal in the social sciences as it is in the "hard" sciences.
The question is, is the primary dynamic here a feedback cycle of violence and hate? Or are there other factors here we have to pay attention to? Some groups can be appeased effectively and a reasonable or even highly mutually beneficial coexistence can be arranged. Others cannot be, and either us or them will end up exterminated. Anyone who says that all cases are of one type are ignorant of history.
So, the question becomes, what sort of enemy are these terrorists? I would argue the latter, and I'm prepared to back it up. But it would be pointless for me to do so before you're willing to admit that a determination needs to be made in the first place.
-- Dog of Justice. *waves at rossz*
Im not scared of being hit by a plane, what worries me the most is that the man with the big red button is... well.. Bush
(2DTV lol)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Yeah, fight the power! Happiness is just The Man telling you how to feel!
The problem is we can't go in and "pick out" the few desperate people. If we could do that then we would...
Take away their fear of being eradicated by us, and they will stop terrorizing us. When we stop supporting terrorists of our own, terrorists will leave us alone.
Excuse me? They (OBL/Taliban) *HATE* us (US people and nation), they hate Christians, freedom and Capitalism. Everything the US stands for is against their ideals (poverty, Allah, etc...). When you have irrational thought (hatred) towards another you do anything to affect them in some way (eradication). The primarily provocation to 9/11 was American idealism, why they targetted the WTC. So, unless you want to start torturing women, growing beards, throwing your TV out, smashing your radios, demolishing your house and erecting a non-insulated hut out of cardboard and praising Allah to appease the terrorists they will continue to hate/despise the US. We can't simply overthrow their government by creating civil unrest they are too strong. Religion is a powerful tool that OBL doesn't hesitate to use for his cause, the citizens are uneducated so they don't know what a Lazy-Boy recliner and a 64" HDTV is. Or even how enjoyable watching -put favorite sport here- is with a cold brew in one hand a bowl of popcorn in the other. Put yourself in their shoes (hard to do) and then try to create a plan to band your unarmed, underfed neighbors together to overthrow the well armed government, not gonna happen. So, some body needs to help you do this, which is what we (US, Britain, NA, etc...) are doing. Once they establish a peaceful regime we'll leave them alone, or probably help their government succeed. Granted, we'll try our damndest to create a democratic society which is, IMO, the wrong thing to do, we tend to force American Ideals on everyone which may not be for their best interests. At the very least it'll be a better society than it is today. Agree?
Sorry for being far off topic but I'm tired of reading and hearing about all this "peacenik" rhetoric. The US was ATTACKED by a foreign entity, we know who was behind it. By doing this they brought war upon themselves and their people. We can't just look the other way we need to defend ourselves. The only way to defend ourselves is to eliminate the threat of future attacks. In eliminating threats we may kill civilians, they forced us to do this, they don't care about their people, we care about our people and, to some extent, their people. If you don't like the fact that the US is defending itself then get the hell out or shut-up!
I just saw that on CNN (tv). It was flying out of Pittsburgh, and was going to Washington. It was diverted to Dulles from another airport after the skymarshalls reported a problem. What the problem is is not yet known. Anybody know anything about this?
Synergy is your friend
Actually, I was thinking of the correct type. a) I'm an aerospace engineer in the industry. b) I skydive. I'm very familiar with both planes and parachutes.
To quote the website that you referrenced: "In a very short amount of time, the aircraft will cease any swinging and stabilize under the now fully-opened canopy at zero forward airspeed."
Kind of hard to glide with ZERO forward airspeed. A modern airliner can glide, from altitude, miles and miles. There was a recent (few months ago) mishap where a plane lost all engines and glided over 60 miles to the nearest airport. At the altitudes (low) that any increase in glide ratio would be usefull, the chute wouldn't have time to deploy and stabilize. Not to mention that turning would be next to impossible in that configuration, so forget about picking a decent place to land, you're going down wherever you happen to be pointing.
That would assume that the media had their shit together _before_ Sept 11, which would be a very bad assumption. This is just the latest thing for them to hype all out of proportion - SOP for the media.
It certainly did stop the Nazis, sure there's a few stragglers around here and there, but for the most part we freed the Jews. If Hitler had his way he would have eliminated every Jew on the planet, would he have stopped there? Certainly not.
Face it, nobody lives in a Utopian society. There have been and always will be criminals in one form or another.
The only way to stop OBL's terrorism is to become Arab and give up the American way of life. The US won't do that so the threat of more terrorism will always persist. Even if we did then some other country would get pissed off... Stopping violence won't stop hate, it's not that easy, people still hate today because of previous violence. Unless you could wipe everyone's mind of history and start "from scratch" there will always be hatred. Slavery was abolished in the US over a hundred years ago yet the KKK still exist. Hitler was killed 60 years ago yet there are "Neo Nazis" around. If we kill OBL Al-Qaeda will still be around. You don't actually think that if we peacably eliminated Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that some of them would still hate the US do you? All it takes is 1 terrorist to kill thousands... OBL is the head, we chop it off and the body will slowly decay, sure it won't happen overnight, but not doing anything will just allow it to grow more...
I was a Gore backer, but I also know how to read. The AP's official testimony shows that Gore was about 2,000 votes behind in Florida.
-Legion
Having read that article and the quotations that they attribute to that video, I'm wondering how the Telegraph turns those quotations into a confession or an admission of guilt. I mean, I know that there are some differences between the Queen's english and what us filthy americans speak, but I didn't realize that using the words "I" or "we" was a full fledged admission of anything... That's a huge frickin leap if you ask me.
itachi
History might teach us that with regards to intranational conflict, but not with regards to terrorism. Look at Israel, master of the ultra-violent response to terrorist attacks. Look at Britain, well versed in stomping on terrorists. Look at Spain and the Basques. Violence really doesn't stop terrorism. Appeasement might not either, but that means that policy makers need to come up with a third solution, not keep choosing one of the wrong answers.
itachi
An Aussie mate of mine opened his laptop on an American aircraft recently, and discovered his large, flat-bladed screwdriver inside the bag. It would make a dandy lethal weapon. A hostess was leaning over his seat to adjust something at the time, and advised him to hide it and say nothing.
How difficult would it be to hide a couple of pistols in the laptop's docking bays?
The reason that Israeli airliners don't get hijacked is that if a terrorist stood up in one, he'd be dead in seconds, weapons or not. You can't legislate safety, but you *can* legislate the right to self-defense, and you *can* avoid so drowning your people in a network of complex rules for every breath and every step of their lives that they're aware enough to actually use that right.
You can also remove a lot of reasons for others to hate you by not throwing your weight around internationally. That reduces terrorism without hamstringing your own people.
Finally, you need to ask why the government would declare a war when 5000 people die, but not against the tens of thousands of drunk-driver killings that happen in the mainland USA every year.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
There was an article in The Economist claiming that terrorist nuclear attacks are a serious threat. After Sept.11, this seems worryingly plausible. If this happens, it will make Sept.11 look like "small beer" as the French say.
It would trouble me either way. We don't need the airlines doing the terrorists' work for them. If it isn't a terrorist incident, people are going to blame the airlines industry for this -- "have they cut so many jobs and paid so much attention to security that they neglected mechanical safety?". If it is a terrorist incident, they have yet another area of concern. Either way, less people are going to fly.
Shouldn't the phenomenon more fairly be called engine-suck rather than bird-strike? I mean it's not as if flocks of kamikaze birds don their helmets and goggles, and tear towards engine #1 screaming BANZAI! is it?
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
bin Laden, being a Saudi, would have recieved the bulk of his tactical learning from Western sources and would be accustomed to the ways and mannerisms of US forces.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Ahh! That's how they can do it... The news sites should monitor for sudden drops in the stock markets, and when they occur switch automatically to text-only :-)
Copyright 2001 Salon.com
The General Electric CF6-80C2 turbofans in the Airbus that went down are designed to be swapped out easily, without removal of accessory panels - that is, you don't have to take the top shell of the wing off. The mount point, while very solid, is still weaker than the surrounding stucture, and may be vulnerable to a shaped charge triggered by a barometer. As little as 200g of plastique or 300g of TNT composite is sufficient to cut a 25mm alloy mounting bolt or two if shaped properly(more TNT composite is necessary, as you need more filler to hold the shape of the charge). A device of this type could be as small as 50-60 cm^3 and could easily fit in a toolbox.
In addition, this document details some of the mandatory modifications to this engine, not the least of which is:
"DGCACF6-80C2/12 FAA AD 95-17-16. AS IN AD & SB. AS IN AD & SB. TO PREVENT COMPRESSOR REAR FRAME(CRF) SEPERATION, WHICH COULD RESULT IN A REJECTED TAKEOFF AND DAMAGE TO THE AIRCRAFT."
Note that the engine in the parking lot of the gas station on 116th has the rear frame ripped or blown off. It could be that either this disaster represents a failure in a known vulnerable engine component in which case GE is responsible, a failure by American to do required modifications of said engine in which case American and GE are responsible, or an act of deliberate sabotage exploiting a known vulnerable engine component, in which case GE and the saboteur are responsible. However, the internals of this area are extremely hot, even in flight. Therefore, a charge in this area would need to be external - that is, noticable in a preflight walkaround - so it seems unlikely that a charge was used to exploit this weakness.
Accessing the rear frame area of the engine is harder to do, but is done more often and therefore would attract less attention. However, the level of sabotage neceesary to assure a catastrophic failure at altitude would in all likelihood create that same failure immediately upon preflight engine start.
In all cases, it seems that people are not looking hard enough at the designer and manufacturer of the CF6-80C2, General Electric.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
The "fuel dump" was total bollocks?
The plane broke apart and there was NO time to dump fuel... the fuel was 'dumped' because there was a large explosion and the tanks were ruptured.
What kind of funky, retard-grade crack are moderators smoking these days, anyway?
If you wanted to mod him down, "overrated" would be a more logical reason. It's hard to be redundant when the comment you're posting is the first comment on the story. Maybe if moderators would stop reading at "highest rated first"...
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
I live in Queens, about 8-9 miles from the crash site. As opposed to the 14-15 miles from the WTC.
I just got an Iguana, and was playing with him all morning. We turned the TV on at around noon to see the news. I soaked it in for about 20 minutes, went "meh" and turned it off. People on IRC across the country were discussing it for hours.
It's interesting that this didn't even rile me, what with all of the other things I've had happen to me the past few months. I suppose in a few weeks, I'll think about all of the people that died and start crying.
Terrorists winning? Only if apathy is their goal.
For such a great place, it is absulotly bafling to me that we can have people on here who think we should kill Islam because it is the source of all world troubles. And others hailing the Idea of dropping nukes on a country where there are bound to not even hit a damn terrorist, but rather kill tens-of thousands of innocent people!!! How the hell do you people live with yourselves?
"You're philosophy won't save lives, a nuke will" How in God's name is a weapon of mass destruction dropped on a country where most of the people are starving anyway help stop radicals in America that are destroying things????
How exactly do you people figure you are better than any of these terrorists? By killing thousands of people cause you are pissed? Next time, try thinking for about 40 seconds about who you are instead of the people you hate.
You Don't have to burn books to destroy a culture, you just have to get people to stop reading them. Ray Bradbury
Not saying that we should just leave criminals alone, or that we should ignore terrorist attacks, but the methods we use, in the one case a PROVEN to not work as desired, and in the second case, are likely to not work as desired. Therefore, we need to come up with different solutions.
News flash - bombing Afghanistan isn't gonna make your daughter any safer. It might make you FEEL safer, but it won't make terrorism from there go away.
Yes and it looks like this one just went down by itself. The pilot dumped the fuel just moments before the crash.
I don't think we should count the 4 that were crashes due to terrorism as part of the 7. That leaves 3 and in a year that is almost over, although lives were lost, is not really that bad.
This has however, been a trying and very unusual year.
Then why are we attacking Afghanistan, when most of the al-Quadians (that might be correct...) are Saudis?
BECAUSE THEY ARE IN AFGHANISTAN! I mean, wtf? Do you suppose we should attack their homeland? A nation that has thoroughly denounced Bin Laden and wants to execute him? That would be like Nuking Italy to get at the Mafia, like attacking Germany to stop neo-Nazism, Attacking Columbia to stop street dealers... oh wait... But you get the picture. Al-Queda members (the correct term) are in Afghanistan. They are supported by the Taliban which we claim as an enemy.
To be honest, I don't give two shits about Al-Queda or whatever, but I've wanted to see the Taliban go straight to hell since long before sept11th. And now that they are, I couldn't be happier.
They kill more people in public executions each year then we ever will.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
attack their spelling.
You're pointing out of my spelling error has thoroughly routed my argument. Congratulations, clearly you have won, and displayed a superior intellect.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Musta been thinking 1620 meters per mile, got it backwards. Duh.
Well, it's still way too damned big to be practical.
Infuriate left and right
I like the CNN summary:
"260 were on airliner, six to nine missing on ground; 265 bodies recovered"
This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
Engine gets major saftey overhaul. Engine blowes the fuck up 3 minutes of active use afterwards. If there was a major overhaul of the engine, i'd bet on sabotage, to be honest.
fortunetly, from what I've heard it was just a spot-check yesterday.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
---Stocks are investments. When you invest money, you are funding production.---
Yes, but you apparently forgot that buying stocks is not the only way that production is funded, and that money not used to buy stocks doesn't just vanish into smoke. You can't tell a story about one part of the economy, and simply ignore the rest. If you want to prove to me or anyone that you have a clue, you need to suggest an economic _model_ of how the economy works, and show how falling stock prices contribute to net social loss of surplus.
---It may seem too abstract for you to wrap your defective little brain around, but here's a simple example at the extreme: when stock prices drop below a certain level, it makes sense to buy the company just to sell off its easily-scrapped assets.----
When the assests of one company are sold to another, society is neither better or worse off. No one is going to do something as silly as scrap productive assests. If they are productive, they will be put to use. If not, not, and rightly so. Your story simply doesn't make any sense.
---That's the key: efficient allocation of resources. That's the very definition of economy, and that's what markets are for. When the markets fail, everything else goes down with them.---
You haven't made a case for why falling stock prices = markets failing. And you certainly haven't made a case that not buying stocks = misallocation of resources. Where do you think the money that isn't used to buy stock DOES go? To the moon? People are quite justified, for instance, in supposing that widespread disaster in the airline industry means that the industry as a whole will be less profitable than it otherwise woul have been. Simply buying it's stock doesn't make the bussiness any more profitable.
Economists have a long list of ways that markets can fail, but low stock prices isn't one of them. Sometimes, lower prices are justified, and it's a better investment to buy other things.
I got to say that I must agree with him. It is really not the Frenchie's fault but the actual design of the plane itself. Has anyone ever flown in one? It feels like the plane would fall apart.
I would honestly like to see the airlines bring back/increase the amount of 747s (or atleast the new 777s) in their fleet.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
I saw slashdot.org's posting when it only had 20 entries, but had nothing new to add. Now it has over a thousand postings, and there is little chance I will be read by anyone but the most dedicated or zealous of terrorist news followers. Still I am going to record my thoughts, mostly for potential told-you-so value.
Planes do crash accidentally, but there is a near coincident of date, and a coincidence of location to consider. Any plane crashing in the US is going to initially be under suspicion of terrorist activity, but President Bush has taken to attach significance to the date of 11-11-01 as the 2 month Anniversary of 9-11. 11-12-01 has significance as Veteran's Day, and as the closest weekday to 11-11-01. Add to this New York as the location, and I swing back to terrorist activity as the probable cause.
Yes this is all circumstantial evidence, but to be honest, I like many other Americans have been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and even if this is terrorist activity, it is mild compared to what has been threatened. With what has been learned about sloppy airport security, I'm surprised there have not been more airline incidents in the last two months.
While we are more carefully screening carry-on baggage, I am of the impression we are not screening all checked baggage. It might also be that we mix freight cargo with passenger cargo (maybe some well-informed person could tell us if this is true of not), thus an altimetrically triggered bomb could bring down an airplane with only having been air freighted by someone.
I'm not sure why there seems to be so much effort exerted to push the accident theory for flight 587. It may well be an accident, but it seems like the news media are pushing to have the public believe accident "until proven otherwise" (I suppose to prevent panic). Personally, I think we should assume "terrorist incident" until proven otherwise. Because the latter will lead to a tightening of security that might prevent another downed planed in the near term.
Letter To Iran
I work in Germany and while driving home yesterday I heard something on the radio to the effect of "Airbus catastrophe in Queens". (my German isn't great) I raced home and turned on trusty CNN international, and saw...the global weather report. I waited for the next set of stories to start and was treated more stories of reporter heroics in Afghanistan. I felt relieved and had myself a beer, and thought that I really had to work on my German if I managed to misinterpret things that badly. A while later, flipping through the channels, I saw the French news with a live reports on the newest New York inferno. BBC had live coverage and so did 3 German channels. I went back to CNN and eventually they had a brief 2 minute blurb on the crash. They did not even put up the hotline number for victims families to call. (BCC did) I don't know what it was like in the US, but I get the feeling that the Government told the Media not to make a big deal about this. Think about the last big airline crash in the US (pre-Sept 11. ), and remember the kind of coverage that it got. It is fine trying to keep up the people's spirits and moral, but this is just stupid. Has CNN just lost it, or are we losing our "free press"?
-------------------------------END--COMMUNICATION
.. In this time, i think people of all races', colours and backgrounds should be uniting together, and, instead of fighting, laydown their arms, and their hatred of each-other, stop their predudice and should stand and ask the question:
"Is Bush and the entire American government a bunch of incompetant red-neck crack sniffers?, or is it just me"
and should reply their question with:
"Yes, yes they are. And we must stop our fighting and hatred for eachother, and go and kill Bush and the Government, 'cos, lets face it, this is all their fault."
And then we could have a good ol' fashond linchmob, Texas style, _or_ even better, we could hand said government over to the Taliban (requesting tv viewing rights ofcourse).
If i was incharge of airline safety/security i would have resigned long time ago lol...
In other news: A car has crashed in downtown NY, the car, travelling at 3 mph, hit the bumber of another car infront, a 5 block area has been cordened off, but police say they dont think it was the work of terrorists.
oh, am i gonna get modded down for this...
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I suppose I should have made myself more clear for the braindead among us. Jail sentences do not reduce crime, by any signifigant amount, because WHEN THEY ARE RELEASED, most former convicts then continue to commit crimes. An alternative would be life or death sentences, and it's true that getting rid of parole, early release, and any jail sentence less than 30 years probably WOULD reduce crime, but you don't hear a whole lot of arguments in that case. Most criminals who serve time are repeat offenders. If jail time reduced crime, then the opposite would be true.
I'm wondering what exactly you think bombing Afghanistan will do to make your daughter any safer, other than in the pedantic sense that every person who is killed is one less person that might someday be a terrorist, by which argument we may as well nuke china and india and take out the bulk of the world population right there.
1. It was a terrorist attack. That means airport security still sux, and I'm not going on a plane until that changes.
2. It was an accident. That means airport maintaince sux, and I'm not going on a plane until that changes.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Fine. Quit buying their stuff. Next?
Oh wait, what, that's not good enough? You want to force other people to have to accept your ban on big business? Your choice isn't enough?
And if I choose not to spend billions on a bailout of the inefficient airline industry? It's not capitalism that I am opposed to, it is when the government spends tax dollars propping up allegedly for-profit businesses, and then people like you seem to think that if I oppose this that I'm forcing some sort of consumer choice down your throat. Get over your bad self.
Of course, the real problem is that we do unpopular actions worldwide.
Tell me, your confused blathering makes you real unpopular with intelligent people. Does that give us the right to deal with you in Bin Laden's manner? How about we just institute public caning to help guide some of our weaker citizens?
According to your reasoning, this approach is justified.
Huh? My reasoning is this: if you don't care what people think about you, don't be surprised if they don't like you. My point is not that killing is justified - that's your point. Rather I hold that one cannot defeat hatred with violence, and that the problem is hatred.
Ironically, I'm sure you would be happy to cane me. I fear you may have a lot in common with Osama. :(
simply to protect our economic interests (sorry, Saudi Arabia!
There's the parallel. You hate big business, but have to buy their products every day. You hate countries like Saudi Arabia, but probably drive a car and use their oil.
You really need to make a choice and quit lying to yourself: become a hermit and follow your principles, or learn that buying a product does not mean you fully endorse their belief system.
Actually, I don't own a car. I use public transportation. I recycle. I don't eat meat. I'm not sure why you think I should be a hermit, but I do follow my principles, thanks.
This means signing treaties to submit to the decisions of world justice
This would be a violation of the contract this country is based on. For a political leader or a citizen to advocate this is to declare opposition to the laws of the US. Some call it treason, but that is such a distasteful word.
I assume this means that you think that we should pull out of the GATT? Oops - that's about free trade, so it must be a good thing.
The U.S. Military already has a separate justice system, not subject to civilian rules. Since we already have strict guidelines forbidding human rights abuses by our soldiers, why would it matter if we signed a treaty saying we won't tolerate that? We already agree to hand over civilians to foreign justice, and yet for some reason that's not treason!
The U.S. has no problems dragging foreign leaders out of their countries and taking them to trial (admittedly, real scum bags, but we're talking about princples here, right?). Why is it okay to do unto others but not vice versa? Might makes right?
Look. Instead of neutering the US, leave. Our constitution is quite clear and is a contract with all who live here. You obviously value some other order where you can push people around. I'd suggest you move to Britain. They've done a great job neutering the country, feeling guilty about not being loved by others, etc. You'll fit right in there. Of course, Canada's on their way there already and they're a cheaper airfare.
All because I think the U.S. should play by the same rules as everybody else doesn't mean that I should have to leave.
I don't want the U.S. neutered, I want it to pursue measures that will help move towards genuine, long term peace. Continuing an arrogant, narrowly self-interested foreign agenda won't do it, not matter how much you spend on ABM techology.
Very few people get drunk accidentally, even fewer drive cars accidentally.
Drink-driving is gross negligence, and when you drink, drive and kill someone it's absolutely, unquestionably your fault that they died. You took every step on the road to their death. You killed them. You trundle past policemen, knowing you're doing wrong and hoping that they'll not notice you, as did bin Laden's hijackers. It's no different in principle, only in scale.
A number of countries with a more pragmatic attitude to such things have discovered that shooting repeat-offense drink drivers out of hand is immensely profitable in terms of lives not lost. Perhaps America should do the same?
.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Damn good response. While I only referred to his posting as "silly arguments" in general, you did an expert job of picking apart every one of his points. To put it another way, you performed an intellectual kicking in the nuts. Of course, since he's a pacifist, he'll probably break out in a Barnie song.
My recipe for dealing with pacifists requires fava beans and a nice Chianti.
-- Will program for bandwidth