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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.)
The new rules are hilarious however:
- Not allowed to have any items or anything on your lap for the last 1 hour of flight
- Not allowed to go to toilet during that time either
- Crew doesn't tell about cities or landmarks so passengers don't know where they are flying (it's so hard to time that on clock)
What is that going to improve?
He was coming to the States to deliver my $40,000,000US.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The message is clear: Don't fuck with people flying in to Detroit. We have very little to lose. I can see that scenario playing out now:
"I will blow up the plane!"
"Jackass, I'm *willingly* leaving a place with universal health care, low crime, and pot on every street corner to go *home* to a city with crushing illiteracy, high crime, and an epic unemployment level. Do you think I really give a flying fuck about dying?"
I just wonder how many people were uncomfortable with the extra federal attention the flight got when it landed =)
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Mandatory bacon sandwiches before boarding the plane. Everybody wins.
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
seriously? just because it wasn't successful by your standards you are ruling out Al-Qaeda? they are not perfect. they fail just like everyone else. they do however learn very fast from their mistakes and try again. there is no reason to believe this wasn't them just because it wasn't successful in bringing down the plane. it was successful in showing them how to get certain components onboard. it was successful in showing how to assemble them onboard. it was successful in showing how we react to their new plan. i'm sure it was successful in accomplishing any number of their objectives. sometimes they just send people out to test reactions and responses to attempted attacks. not all actions are full on real attacks, sometimes they are just testing our lines.
i'm not saying that is was for sure Al-Qaeda, but i'm not stupid enough to rule them out just because it didn't fit my idea of what a successful Al-Qaeda attack should be. they only have to be successful in bringing down the plane once, we have to be successful in stopping them every time.
what has me is how this guy was allowed to land ALIVE. i for one will not take prisoners when somebody trys to blow me up in the sky.
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.
I've done the same thing a few times and there are a number of problems.
The first is it's one thing to spend over night or most of a day traveling by train instead of most of a day "flying" (flying, say, from NYC to Palm Beach consists of approximately 3-4 hours of flying, but a little over two hours of "getting there, checking in, going through security, making sure you're way early due to paranoia, etc", umpteen hours of layovers, and at least thirty minutes of baggage claims, plus another thirty to sixty minutes of getting out of the air port and getting to your destination), but generally with Amtrak it's a little of both, multiplied.
I've taken the train from Palm Beach to NYC, it's around 26-30 hours, depending on the precise train you take and how much it's delayed. In practice, that's most of two days, plus a night.
Then there's the cost. A bedroom (which is what you describe, roomettes don't include showers - and the "toilet" in them isn't something you'd want to use given it's not enclosed) generally costs around $500-1,000 per night on top of the regular fares. Roomettes are a little cheaper, $300-500 per night, generally, but are even less comfortable and, like I said, you wouldn't want to use the toilet and you have to share a shower. Again though, you add fares to that. You can forgo both and sit in the standard seats, which are certainly more comfortable than airline seats, for something more competitive with airlines, but for a minimum of 26 hours?
Rail travel could be cheaper and could actually compete with the airlines. If Amtrak and CSX et al improved the track, including engaging in a program of electrification (which they should do anyway), and started using lighter, lower cost, rolling stock, they could run faster trains at lower cost, which in turn would increase passenger numbers exponentially and mean they could use the same rolling stock for more trips. Palm Beach to NYC is only 1,200 miles. At an average of 100mph, which is hardly rocket speed outside of the US, that trip could be done in 12-15 hours (depending on number of stops.) I think a huge contingent of people would be more than willing to go by train if you could get in a train in the morning and get off at your destination before the end of the day. Travel for ten hours in confusion and discomfort, or travel for fifteen in comfort. Not the world's hardest choice.
Alas, outside of the North East, I seriously think Amtrak sees itself as a state subsidized version of a Heritage Railway. In England, there Heritage Railways are limited to 25mph because they originally operated under a nineteenth century law making it easy to create independent railways that was never updated. In the US, Amtrak runs most of its East Coast trains at 25-30mph outside of the DC to Boston portion because the sodding track doesn't support faster speeds.
And then people turn around and complain that trains are obsolete and we shouldn't fund (and fix) Amtrak because railways are inherently slow and inflexible, while the French, Japanese, and even the post-Beeching British, scratch their heads and wonder what the hell happened to a country that was built by the railroads.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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?
One of the things I rather miss in the UK is the whole train travel experience. Here's how it works:
1. The US.
Now, the Chinese experience sounds better. But here's what I had to do on British Rail. Now, British Rail was an awful, nationalized, mess full of everything bad you associate with nationalized industries. It had been ripped apart in the 1960s by the road lobby, and from then until privatization was heavily underfunded and everything was constantly under the threat of closure or reduction. So, this is Crap by the standards it could have been. Also, this was during a time when Britain was suffering real terrorism from people who couldn't be screened out via passport checks.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Rail travel could be cheaper and could actually compete with the airlines. If Amtrak and CSX et al improved the track, including engaging in a program of electrification (which they should do anyway), and started using lighter, lower cost, rolling stock,
I don't disagree with most of what you wrote, but I have to comment on this segment. First, regarding "lighter, lower cost rolling stock" there's a huge perception that the Acela service on the NEC corridor sucks because they train is too heavy, and in turn the train is too heavy because of FRA safety regs. Yes, the Acela is heavy, and yes the Acela is heavy because of safety regs (although the FRA regs were revised in the late 1990's to make accommodations for the Acela) but that's not the cause of any performance problems. I worked on the testing of the Acela trainsets in Pueblo and in NJ in 2000 and the trainset can sustain speeds of well over 150 mph for hours at a time. The power cars are plenty powerful - one of the Amtrak engineers on the project told me that if a trainset was powered by one PC instead of the normal two, the end-to-end (Bos-DC) run time would only be increased by 5 minutes). If you look at the cost of an Acela trainset, it falls within the range of other HSR trainsets like the ICE, TGV and Eurostar (albiet at the higher end). The Acela service sucks because it shares tracks with freight trains (in fact most of the NEC is dispatched by CSX and Norfolk Southern who tend to prioritize their trains over Amtrak trains), because the catenary south of NYC dates from the 10th century and can't handle high speeds, because there are a number of grade-crossings along the line north of NYC that the trains have to slow down for, and because the track has a lot of curves that the train has to slow down for.
In any event, the rolling stock is by far a minor cost compared with the total capital cost of an HSR system. Train track costs on the order of $1 million/mile for a single track. That costs does not include land acquisition, electrification, environmental review, the inevitable NIMBY litigation, mitigation costs, etc. And I agree that more electrification is something we need, but it's not just a matter of stringing wire. Bridges have to be raised to allow for the additional clearance for the catenary, if you're electrifying an existing line you have to do the work at night to minimize traffic disruption which means nighttime nose & lighting concerns, you have safety concerns (especially at crossings), you have to acquire more ROW for electrical substations, and so one. Combine all these costs with the perception that "transit needs to pay for itself" and you have a country unwilling to invest the hundreds of billions of dollars necessary for a world class rail system.