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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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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...
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?
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.
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?
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