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Man Tries To Use Explosive Device On US Flight
reporter writes with news that a Nigerian man allegedly attempted to set off a small explosive device — possibly a firecracker — on a Delta Airbus 330 airliner bound for Detroit yesterday. "There was a pop and then smoke wafted through the cabin. A passenger then climbed over several seats, lunged across the aisle and managed to subdue the suspect, the eyewitnesses said. The Nigerian man was placed in a headlock before being dragged up to the first class cabin. Passenger Zeina Seagal told CNN that after the suspect was collared and parts of his burning pants were removed, flight attendants quickly grabbed fire extinguishers and doused the fire at his seat." The man has claimed links to al-Qaeda, though the investigation hasn't confirmed that yet. (They're not taking anything for granted given that his pants were literally on fire.)
Just wait when they ban laptops because of explosive batteries! Terrorism on a plane is just pointless for this reason alone. The passengers will fight the fool to his death.
Crazy loner sets off home made firecracker on plane and lights pants on fire.
Oh, this is wonderful. Now we will probably be strip searched and forced to wear airline clothing. Why not just reconfigure planes to be more like cargo vehicles and put all passengers into a coma and pack and transport them like packages? :(
... that the plane landed in Havana, the hijacker got off the plane, and everyone went around their business or it landed in Tel-Aviv, the plane on the ground, and the hijackers shot/arrested with one or two dead passengers that the hijackers had killed to show they were "serious". The passengers sat in their seats and waited it out.
Those were the days when hijackers could depend on the passivity of passengers.
With planes being flown into buildings, passengers are no longer passive. It's not the TSA that keeps planes safe, it's the passengers and crew that will beat the snot out of the latest Al-Q "martyr."
--
BMO
Which is really retarded, since any of those "hijack a plane and plunge it into a building" attacks are going to happen in the first hour when the plane's full of fuel. Kneejerk facists would be a real worry if they weren't all so hilariously incompetent.
Do you have a source for that?
Security is getting so ridiculous that I'm forced to wonder how long it will be until these people decide to ban passengers. No passengers -> no terrorists -> no victims.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
This seems to be a looping problem. All the government can think about is the last attempt, only backwards. There has been lots of dedication into flights after 9/11, while leaving all the other security problems open. Now its the same thing. This single thing happened on the last hour of flight, so they're thinking it's always going to happen on last hour of flight now.
And you are perfectly correct, even 9/11 happened in first minutes of flights, since they were flights leaving from US.
Don't solve the problem by looking backwards and making stupid rules to counter those; solve the whole problem and look why it is happening.
Or, it's some basic cultural misunderstanding where he thought it was appropriate to celebrate with firecrackers on Xmas. If this the biggest terrorist threat of the year then America can sleep soundly.
And 9/11 won't happen again because this time the passengers won't let it. As soon as people learned the rules had changed, that the hijackers were going to kill them and not just hold them hostage till they reach their destination, their tactics became ineffective. People know that do nothing means death, but doing something may have give them a chance at life.
Why isn't the TSA strip searching Muslim males? That's easy:
1. They couldn't identify which men are Muslim or not. It's not like there's a big sign written on each Muslim saying "I am a Muslim" (and if there were, a reasonably smart terrorist wouldn't wear it when they went to bomb a plane).
2. The First Amendment of the Constitution protects the free exercise of religion, Islam included. Treating members of a particular faith as second-class citizens would definitely violate that. And yes, there are Muslims citizens of the US, some of them currently serving the country in Iraq and Afghanistan, who are more loyal to the US and what it stands for than you are.
3. At least 99.9% of Muslim men aren't terrorists. You're arguing for strip searching about 800 million people in order to find a few thousand people. Your odds are only slightly better than strip searching the 99.99% of Christian men who aren't terrorists to find the 0.01% who are (e.g. Tim McVeigh or members of the Real IRA).
I am officially gone from
Amazing. Given US's kneejerk reactions to these kinds of events, is it at all surprising that more and more people are refusing to visit the United States for anything other than business purposes? These idiots either don't realize or don't care that overreaction does have its price.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Have you noticed a pattern to most Terrorism attempts? They tend to fail.
The plot that hit the USS Cole started with a boat so loaded with explosives that it sank before it reached an American warship.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
>2. The First Amendment of the Constitution [...]Treating members of a particular faith as second-class citizens would definitely violate that
Right. So we treat EVERYONE like second-class citizens so it is fair.
Not that I disagree with you, I am just pissed about the whole plane security thing. Typical reaction? They will spent hundreds of million dollars to perform background checks on passengers to see if they have ever attended a fireworks show. Passengers wearing clothing depicting fireworks or who have laptops with a fireworks screen saver will be banned. If the "firecracker terrorist" wore an earring, earrings will be banned from planes. You get the idea- a bunch of pretty meaningless steps to further ruin air travel, delay passengers, violate privacy, push prices up, all so people will feel "safe" again.
http://xkcd.com/651/
Granted, the weapon of choice is a bit different...
Mandatory bacon sandwiches before boarding the plane. Everybody wins.
Accompanied by a snifter of fine cognac. Or at least a shot of cheap vodka. No swallow - no fly.
Damn, I'd even pay a couple of bucks for that kind of security...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Just like I told people I was with on that awful Tuesday morning almost nine years ago while we sat staring at CNN, "The era of 'be cool and obey the hijackers and everything will be fine' is now over."
I was proven right not long after when the Muslim Kramer tried to light up his shoes and got his ass kicked by the passengers.
I was proven right nearly every time a passenger acts up on a plane anymore-- if it makes the news, you almost always hear that other passengers helped subdue him.
I was proven right again yesterday.
We don't need a great deal of that TSA bullshit anymore, because the passengers are on the case now. Unless someone can get enough stuff on board to instantaneously destroy the plane, the passengers are gonna react and be tripping over each other to fuck him up. And the TSA bullshit that remains should just be focused on the passengers that fit the terrorist profile, and the hell with this political correctness nonsense.
I want to walk through security without taking my shoes off, and I want to bring a goddamn bottle of Pepsi onto the plane without having to pay 4 bucks for it after I pass security.
Exactly. We don't need ANY airport security anymore. Just laws granting civil and criminal immunity to passengers and crew defending themselves on flights. The people onboard can and will protect themselves.
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
Expect the Authorities to milk this event for what it's worth when it comes to justifying mandatory pre-flight anal probing sessions, more mass surveillance and the outlawing of encryption they're not sure how to crack.
All that harassment of decent passengers and once again the true "weapon against hijacking" saves the day. I.e. People don't like to blow up so they will beet the crap out of anyone who tries. If you aim to blow up a plane it had better freaking explode before anyone sees you doing anything suspicious.
Searching for bombs, detaining luggage, banning liquids etc... helps nobody. Hijack and bombing attempts fail when another passenger beets the crap out of you.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
It's important to remember that the goal here is not to bring down planes or buildings - it's to create turmoil and terror. Simple actions like this cause millions to billions of dollars of cost to our economy for the investment of a can of lighter fluid and a firecracker. Because of one case of semi-successful action by one clown millions of us will now be subject to ineffective additional screening, more TSA invasions of privacy and general police state tactics, more delays. I don't have the answer - but I know the ROI from a terrorist perspective is outstanding.
If this was really an al-Qaeda plot - then why did he not succeed in crashing the airplane ?
Because they had to depend on a suicidal human for the final part. And not all parts of Al Qaida (which is in practice a funding network for otherwise disparate Islamic themed terrorist groups) are uniformly competent. Having said that, this guy might well be someone who got scammed ("You want to strike a blow against the Great Satan? And you got real American dollars? We'll be whatever terrorist network you want us to be, buddy! Here's your top quality suicide pants! I use them myself!"). The so-called "lone wolf" who isn't connected to obvious terrorist groups.
If this was really an al-Qaeda plot - then why did he not succeed in crashing the airplane ? Are you really trying to convince me that they are a bunch of incompetents who just manage to cause a little damage but that is all ?
Al Quaeda does not exist, it's a fiction created by the Intelligence Community to replace the red menace that had ceased to fuel their budgets.
You can't take the sky from me...
Are you really trying to convince me that they are a bunch of incompetents who just manage to cause a little damage but that is all ?
Most terrorists, like most other criminals, are not smart people. Smart people don't tend to try and blow themselves up.
Really, on what planet does that exist? Right now I'm booked for a flight from Pennsylvania to Colorado. Both involve a layover in Chicago.
My round trip cost for the flight was about $200. The first half is actually direct, and will only take me about 4-5 hours. The return trip has a 2 hour delay due to the layover.
Now lets compare that to what Amtrak offered me.
Same departure time/date. I would leave PA on Sunday and arrive in Denver on.... Tuesday. So that means I'll HAVE to purchase the rooms. (27 hours of travel time if you ignore the transfer delays)
Round trip cost for Amtrak with the necessary rooms? $800+ Not to ignore the fact that I'd spend nearly 2.25 days travelling alone. If I were to drive, GoogleMaps puts the travel time at 22 hours. So I could rent a car for a week, drive there in less time, and actually have three other people travel with me for no additional cost. The cost on Amtrak would be $2400 before tax to take 3 people from PA to CO.
Trains are good for sightseeing tours for a couple at most. A family would be expensive beyond belief. Better to fly and then rent a vehicle (since you have to rent a vehicle on the other end for the train anyway.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
To advocate that idea seriously, it's not enough to be an anti-Muslim bigot: you have to be anti-Semitic as well.
Yeah, but nearly 99.9% of terrorists are Muslim.
By that logic we should strip search anyone who breathes, after all 100% of terrorists breathe air.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Please don't talk about 9/11 like its an annual holiday. It was 9/11/2001. Almost 10 years ago. Flying is safe. Safer than taking a shower.
Who needs success? Plans are enough! Just plans is how we got those silly no-liquids rules. And on top of that a week of highly disrupted air traffic. Terrorism is that easy. I'd almost call it dead easy but in that case no death involved.
Lets go Swiss. Everyone is required to complete military service (4 to 6 years). In which, they get trained on weapons usage, self defense, martial arts, etc. Now, you have a whole plane load of security experts.
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
After all the billions of dollars spent on TSA, great delays and annoyances to customers, fictitious work of thousands of employees, and the unfathomed damage to the airline industry, the one time when an actual terrorist tries to smuggle explosives on board and all this charade fails spectacularly.
The response? Add more of the same ineffective measures.
Thank goodness for the incompetence of the terrorist.
That's right -the TSA has admitted that binary explosives are essentially impossible to pull off, and yet they still insist on on the totally pointless liquid restrictions.
That's likely because, as was demonstrated by this incompetent in miniature, even an improperly-mixed binary explosive, if in sufficient quantity, can cause a fire in the cabin that will compromise the safety of the passengers -- depressurization, fumes from the fire, fumes from upholstery, etc.
The passengers will fight the fool to his death.
People do strange things under stress. They do not always do the right things.
The aircraft is most vulnerable to the suicide bomber in take-off and landing. Passengers and crew are belted in.
The plane can be pitched steeply up. The acceleration is significant.
The bomber may take the window seat.
The party of four from the Sun and Shadows Retirement Home may be seated next. Not Bronco Billy Anderson and The Ranger From San Antonio.
None of this will matter, of course, if the primary explosive device ignites within a heart beat or so.
I have wondered idly if it would be worth trying to ignite a magnesium laptop case - or whether a potent explosive or incendiary could be impregnated into ordinary clothing.
Take this argument out of the airplane context, and think about it.
At the Fort Hood shooting, who took out the shooter? He started the shooting in the middle of a group of well trained, but unarmed individuals. Who took him out? An armed civilian. When you take away the ability of people to defend themselves, they are left defenseless.
Not to say a shootout on an aircraft would be a good thing. That's the last thing anyone would want to be involved in. A very dense population, with no place to run to, in an environment that is more dangerous to shoot in. Anyone who would consider such a thing would already consider, their odds of success are much smaller in any group of people who can defend themselves.
Before 9/11, I knew a guy who worked personal security. He brought his sidearm on board a couple times. Once was accidentally, where he forgot it was in his bag (he thought he moved it to checked luggage) and discovered it in his carry-on mid-flight. The other, he discovered he carried it to the checkpoint, but with his credentals, he was told to bring it on with him. He was asking to be allowed to check the bag, and was told "oh, you're clear, go."
Neither time did he create an incident, but if an incident did happen, he would have been the armed civilian who could have ended the situation.
It isn't just on the aircraft where the situation is amazingly dangerous. Consider the 2002 LAX shooting at the El Al terminal. He was shot by an airline security guard, who was one of the few armed people in the area.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
The passengers will fight the fool to his death.
Exactly! 9/11 will never happen again. Not because of the ridiculous tactics of the TSA, but because the rules changed on that day.
Used to be that your plane was hijacked, you flew somewhere obscure and waited on the tarmac while a deal was worked out, and then you were free. That's how box cutters were enough of a weapon to take over the flights.
Now we all know that someone doing trying something like that could very likely end in disaster, so when we passengers see something going down, we put an immediate stop to it.
Exactly. We don't need ANY airport security anymore. Just laws granting civil and criminal immunity to passengers and crew defending themselves on flights. The people onboard can and will protect themselves.
What's that you say? He was only scratching an itch? Not activating a bomb? Oh... wow, good thing I've got immunity for what I did... here then, his family can have his scalp back.
You can't take the sky from me...
Wow, that's pretty stupid. Attackers who are captured alive can give further information, while dead ones can't. Maybe he was a lone nut, but maybe not. But I'm sure making you feel like Jack Bauer is totally worth not potentially preventing other attacks.
You know, it's pretty pathetic that if you go to the TSA website, either there is nothing on there about their change in policy, or their website is so poorly organized that I can't find anything about it (as of 11:37am eastern on Saturday). Their most recent announcement is from yesterday. It's not like people might be traveling today and need to know these things.
Have you noticed a pattern to most Terrorism attempts? They tend to fail.
bin Laden's mates bought some loser a plane ticket for a few thousand dollars and we then impose restrictions that will cost billions of dollars over the next years and assist with driving more airlines into bankruptcy.
And you call that a failure?
Take this argument out of the airplane context, and think about it.
At the Fort Hood shooting, who took out the shooter? He started the shooting in the middle of a group of well trained, but unarmed individuals. Who took him out? An armed civilian. When you take away the ability of people to defend themselves, they are left defenseless.
Not to say a shootout on an aircraft would be a good thing. That's the last thing anyone would want to be involved in. A very dense population, with no place to run to, in an environment that is more dangerous to shoot in. Anyone who would consider such a thing would already consider, their odds of success are much smaller in any group of people who can defend themselves.
Before 9/11, I knew a guy who worked personal security. He brought his sidearm on board a couple times. Once was accidentally, where he forgot it was in his bag (he thought he moved it to checked luggage) and discovered it in his carry-on mid-flight. The other, he discovered he carried it to the checkpoint, but with his credentals, he was told to bring it on with him. He was asking to be allowed to check the bag, and was told "oh, you're clear, go."
Neither time did he create an incident, but if an incident did happen, he would have been the armed civilian who could have ended the situation.
It isn't just on the aircraft where the situation is amazingly dangerous. Consider the 2002 LAX shooting at the El Al terminal. He was shot by an airline security guard, who was one of the few armed people in the area.
Helpless people want you to be helpless too, thus they don't understand any of this.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The sad thing is, these pathetic incompetent terrorists are going to be responsible for causing billions of dollars to spent on extra airport security and many, many lifetimes of time will be wasted in stupid delays.
Some incompetent terrorists tries to blow up the plane, but can't build a proper electronic detonator that a 10th grader could solder together? Now we all have to be humiliated by taking our shoes off.
Some incompetent wanna-be terrorists think about a liquid bomb because they saw it in the movie Die Hard 3? Now millions of Americans have to buy overpriced beverages and/or die of thirst. Not to mention that the world's best chemists don't know a reasonable way to make a liquid bomb actually freakin work.
And now, some useless waste of space terrorist doesn't build a proper bomb using over the counter ingredients like fertilizer/diesel fuel or tannerite. (both are so easy to get that a 10th grader could order either of those explosives). No, the idiot tries to blow up an airliner with what sounds like a gunpowder bomb. And despite only managing to burn his own pants off, undoubtedly some new round of draconian security measures will kill many lifetimes of wasted time at security checkpoints.
Fact is, the United States has killed far more of it's citizens through reacting to the actions of terrorists than terrorists have ever harmed.
Anti-muslim is anti-semitic by definition.
Semites are Arabs, Jews, Armeneans, Syriac, etc.
So anti-semitic is not just anti-jewish, however, there has been a tendency to highjack the word to mean only jews.
These guys are not stupid, if they wanted to do it they would succeed.
Huh? If these guys were smart they wouldn't be using violence as a purported means to achieve their ends.
Only the brain-dead use political violence, or they do so not to achieve what they claim to want, but rather because they like killing people.
Just ask the Basque, recently celebrating a half century of killing people in the name of an independent homeland they are no closer to now than they were decades ago. Just ask the Tamils. Just ask the Palestinians. Just ask the Catholics in Northern Ireland.
Political violence can get you there eventually, but winning the lottery can make you rich too, and that doesn't make it a good retirement plan.
Meanwhile, India somehow managed to liberate itself from British rule without decades of senseless terrorism. It's almost as if there is another way, a better way, that doesn't involve an endless cycle of posturing monkeys thumping their chests and splattering collateral damage all over the landscape.
So don't confuse al Qaeda--or their co-dependent partners in violence who run the US government--with anyone intelligent.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
It is funny how many smart slashdot geeks forget their conditional probabilities - 99.9% of Muslims may not be terrorists but 99% of terrorists trying to blow up planes are most probably Muslims. Ergo, by searching Muslims you have a higher risk of catching the terrorist rather than searching, lets say, Buddhists who board the plane. These people will also certainly have a tendency of being agitated before the flight therefore careful screening of passengers with cameras a-la casino security against cheaters plus pattern recognition software a la "lie to me" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie_to_Me) could help screen many potential threats.
That's a really expensive way to do it - in terms of opportunity cost. Those are years of peoples' lives. They could be doing something else, being productive members of society, living their lives (some of the best years of their life, too). In terms of lost wages alone that service would easily cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars - to say nothing of the price of my liberty.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Exactly correct, every time the TSA figures out how to make traveling even more a pain than before, it's another victory for the Al Qaeda and their buddies. If we change our society, they are achieving success.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
I agree that he should have been spotted as a potential threat. The one way ticket itself is supposed to be a red flag.
But as for the eventually they will get it right part of your argument...
So, we all know there's no negative consequences to them to keep practiceing till they get it right? So, having their agent set his lap on fire and having to have it stomped out isn't a publicity loss for them? There's nobody over there now thinking "Why should I give my hard earned petrodollars to a bunch of clowns?"?
You're manufacturing the failure of your own side. Arguing that Al-Quaeda can suffer an effectively unlimited number of bonehead stupid failures while the rest of the world won't lose respect for them in the process gives them a victory they can't honestly earn. Even that, assumes this fool actually got any help from any real terrorist organization.
An idiot just set his own lap on fire. If Al-Quaeda's goal really is a resurgence of Islam, he just provided a great counterargument - that Islam has become the religion of the Three Stooges. "Hi There, I'm Larryoma and this is my brother Darylhammad, and this is my other brother Darylhammad.". This is not what Islam deserves, but it is not the West that will cause many people to lose respect, it is the terrorists themselves who are hurting Islam. Al-quaeda, not anybody else, has just set respectful recognition of Islam in the West back another decade or so. (Again, assuming that the moron actually had organized help). If I was an Al-Quaeda spokesman right now, I'd be denying that the idiot was ever one of my trainees, unless there's so much proof to come out that they can't.
Who is John Cabal?
"(1) the aircraft had not landed so this was not an attack "on American soil;""
Under US law, it was similar, though. Much like attacking a US flagged ship at sea.
"(2) the nutjob at Ft. Hood had been open and clear that he did not want to be deployed - to the extent of trying to buy his way out of the service. This is not terrorism - it is a mass murder by a man who should have been identified and stopped well before the Ft.Hood shooting."
The nutjob at Ft. Hood didn't want to be deployed because he became sympathetic to the enemies US troops are fighting. He was in regular contact with jihadist groups in the months leading up to the attack, and even wanted to have some of his own patients tried for war crimes. The man cried out "Allahu Akbhar" before he mowed down his fellow soldiers. Admit it or not, this was terrorism. He certainly thought it was.
(3) Your thinly veiled indictment of the changed political culture of the USA now requires that you be outed as the Glen Beck puppet that you are."
And does your silly screed make you a puppet of Micheal Moore and the like?
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Just laws granting civil and criminal immunity to passengers and crew defending themselves on flights.
Breaking news: Self-Defense or defense of the life of another is a legally sufficient defense against murder/manslaughter charges.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
"I do prefer our insanity to 'theirs' but lets not throw stones here."
I'll throw as many stones as I like while they're randomly blowing people up.
And you'll sit there and take it because I'm right and you're wrong.
Why are so many posts with factual errors modded up?
First we need to exterminate the Catholics, apparently paedophiles the bunch of'em...
Oh, wait, it seems that instead, the acts of individuals or comparatively small groups are not characteristic of everyone who shares some label with them. Didn't you get the memo?
No wonder you are anonymous - and coward certainly fits the bill. Desire for murder is strong in you, yes? So you share at least one trait with the terrorists then.
They could be doing something else, being productive members of society, living their lives (some of the best years of their life, too).
So you're saying members of the military aren't productive members of society and that they gain no life experience from service. Speaking as someone who served in the U.S. Navy as a submariner, I find that position laughable. The value of the life you live shouldn't be based on a few years worth of a salary that you're so certain could have been higher.
to say nothing of the price of my liberty
You have your liberty because others are willing to serve. How about getting your head out of your ass?
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Yes we need to stop worrying, but you missed a point.
You can't bring down an airliner with a matchhead bomb. You can't bring down your own seat with a matchhead bomb. All you can do is set your trousers on fire like this nonce did. The same goes for the idiot who tried to mix a bomb with liquids he took on board. The idea that you can cook serious explosives in airplane toilets with the chemicals he had is laughable, yet we have these ridiculous rules about the liquids we can take on board because of this non-existent threat.
People in the security services have an interest in exaggerating threats in order to improve the position in society and the personal power.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
History disagrees. The Troubles mostly stopped when the British government started seriously negotiating with Northern Irish Republicans. The PLO stopped using terrorism when Israel sat down to negotiate.
Terrorists do what they do for a reason. That reason can usually be addressed by politics. There will always be a hardcore that doesn't think the political solution proposed is sufficient (witness IRA splinter groups and Hamas in Israel), but political action can kill most of the support for them. One thing that history did teach us, is that repression is definitely not the political action that works, unless you're prepared for some unacceptable politics (aka, genocide) on the non-terrorist side.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but submarines primarily serve in a deterrent capacity. Go read up on subs; the presence of some weapons is necessary to make potentially hostile nations think twice before doing something stupid.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
This is such disastrously bad reasoning that I honestly don't know where to begin. I think I'll just leave it at this: how is it that your brilliant ideas on the necessity (or lack thereof) of various military components haven't gained widespread traction? While I'm definitely open to learning from spirited debate between political scientists and other academics with respected credentials, I think I'll respectfully decline your armchair philosophy.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.