Terrorism in 'Murica (aka The Homeland)

airlines should be required to employ a harrison ford lookalike on every flight; should be enough to intimidate any potential terrorists

it should be so easy to code an airplane that instead of crashing just sheds its wings and tail and deploys a giant parachute from its roof - wd only take airplane admin ten minutes

last time we flew transatlantic, we were sitting with small children next to us and a nun behind us, I seriously thought we were in some cliched disaster movie.

small children next to you transatlantic sounds like disaster enough to me tbh

last time i was on a transatlantic, i was in the throes of getting a serious sinus infection, sitting next to a 65-year-old Polish woman who drank about nine beers during the course of the flight.

i will be seriously disappointed if the maps w/the lil traveling airplane get turned off

co-sign, that's the best part. I am bringing my own map & a little Monopoly airplane from now on

The map restriction truly means the terrorists have won.

But really, do these security types have any fucking idea what they are doing? Is this some kind of political ploy - like do something, anything to appear proactive?

don't come running to me when your guitar-case gets 'defused' xpost

apparently some nigerian guy went to the bathroom for an hour on another amsterdam -> detroit flight

unclear whether or not hes a terrorist but it was enough to declare an emergency

in fairness to that guy though some of those inflight meals are pretty tough

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/us/politics/w28talk.html?_r=1&hp

rep peter king r ny getting all hot n bothered

“The fact is the system did not work, and we have to find a bipartisan way to fix it,” Mr. King said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “If that had been successful, the plane would have come down and we would have had a Christmas Day massacre with almost 300 people murdered.”
*drools*

well we could cancel christmas from now on.

maybe peter king should just be on all the planes

talk about monday morning quaterbacking...

lol http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/odds-of-airborne-terror.html

We have a one in 83 chance of dying in a traffic accident.

is that over a lifetime?

One of the columns in a security system trade mag I read last year best described this as 'security theater'

Would-be bomber was an engineering student, that explains all...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227127.200-can-university-subjects-reveal-terrorists-in-the-making.html?full=true

yes, over a lifetime

number of deaths per year in U.S. divided by population divided by average lifetime.

^xpost

can understand how the illogic of injustice and the mechanical solution of terror could particularly offend and appeal to engineering mind - jus fixin stuff

http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/users/gambetta/Engineers%20of%20Jihad.pdf

Abstract.

We find that graduates from subjects such as science, engineering,
and medicine are strongly overrepresented among Islamist movements in the
Muslim world, though not among the extremist Islamic groups which have
emerged in Western countries more recently. We also find that engineers alone
are strongly over-represented among graduates in violent groups in both
realms. This is all the more puzzling for engineers are virtually absent from
left-wing violent extremists and only present rather than over-represented
among right-wing extremists. We consider four hypotheses that could explain
this pattern. Is the engineers’ prominence among violent Islamists an accident
of history amplified through network links, or do their technical skills make
them attractive recruits? Do engineers have a ‘mindset’ that makes them a
particularly good match for Islamism, or is their vigorous radicalization
explained by the social conditions they endured in Islamic countries? We
argue that the interaction between the last two causes is the most plausible
explanation of our findings, casting a new light on the sources of Islamic
extremism and grounding macro theories of radicalization in a micro-level
perspective.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/27/gilded-life-of-plane-bomber

from a friend:

"feel bad for anyone else flying into the US in the next few weeks, after we went through regular security, our gate information kept on not getting posted. Then when we do get gate information,we find out that every passenger on every flight headed to the US is getting individually screened. Cue waiting in lines for the next two hours as we inch towards our gate. Our flight gets off 3 hours late, there's a bunch of new safety protocols that the flight attendants were actually arguing about in front of us. The craziest of which is for the last hour to hour and a half, every passenger is prohibited from getting up, using entertainment devices, or holding books and magazines!! Good times."

WHAT. THE. FUCK. kakistocracy imo, delete america, morbs wins

(f'r real tho this shit is alarming and i wish these assholes would stop trying to blow up planes.)

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Saturday, December 26, 2009 8:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM

(j/k, sorta, but srsly---these rxns are why actual clinical morons are allowed to tell ppl that they can't HOLD BOOKS OR MAGAZINES because another actual clinical moron FAILED TO BLOW UP A PLANE)

(i mean obv terror attempts are "alarming" and of course i wish no one blew up a plane ever, but suddenly being all "oh my goodness a terrorist!" is some naive chicken little bullshit. fact: lots of ppl want to blow up america, and it is at least half our own fault. other fact: there is a 1.0 x 10^(-7)% chance that this will ever become a problem for you, personally. but fretting about it in a way that is more vocal than shaking yr dang head or saying RIP victims is ~actually~ counterproductive, and gives crazy assholes license to run roughshod over ppl (both domestic and int'l) that they didn't give a shit about in the first place)

i mostly agree. on a rational level, i totally agree. but the reaction to these things is not 100 percent rational -- which is why terrorism works -- and i can't help that i feel sort of glad i'm not planning on any international flights any time soon. i wouldn't cancel them if i had booked them or anything, but part of me would still be thinking "gee i hope no one blows up this plane." there's nothing wrong with wishing you lived in a world where that wasn't a concern.

no, i totally agree w/u. it's just that the usual mainstream (or w/e) rxn to this stuff makes me despair for humanity in a way that can actually outweigh the despair that comes with knowing that terrorists and terrorism is still like a thing we have to put up with

so basically i am het up and bein a jerk

no, i know what you mean. it's always like, there's no side you can feel good about being on. the terrorists are horrible people, the reaction to/against them is always colored by unsavory stuff that is either useless or worse, it's enough to make a guy just wanna go watch giant blue ecowarriors tear some shit up. which is what i'm gonna do.

oh man can i come

also i am readin the monkey wrench gang (for the first time???) and am in general sympathetic to ecowarriors (PLZ DONT TELL THE FBI)

In two out of every three journeys (guesstimate) since 9/11 I open my luggage to find greetings and salutations from the TSA version of Inspector 12. I'm starting to become a bit glad that events conspired to have me in London this Xmas because my mom would be down a FOX hole by now; Asian writer friend of mine just Facebooked his anticipation of being switched out of his reserved (and paid-for, this is BA) exit row seat for no discernible reason. And yes I would probably have a wee meltdown if a stewardess told me to stow magazines I'd bought in a secure area of an airport, because the only things keeping me distracted on any given flight are the meals and various offerings from Condé Nast.

also: BOOZE

LOL if I drink BOOZE on planes I get dehydrated and if going USA--->UK, drinking doesn't help the jet lag recovery situation either.

I haven't spoken to my mom since Christmas Day but my BiL was flying into Detroit on Xmas night for a week with his brothers, hope he got there without too much hassle.

"feel bad for anyone else flying into the US in the next few weeks"

ungh.

u guys there are movies on planes now

my layover in newark is 3h45m. no chance.

plenty of time to get a lil tased imo

i will probably still be getting tased in manchester

troo

I get to fly home to Portland tomorrow, domestically. This should be interesting and/or retarded.

i'm gonna stick with amtrak. no security at all!

xp, let us know how you get on.

seriously regretting not springing for virgin atlantic direct now. i think i saved about $50. american carriers are misery at the best of times.

i was on amtrak today and someone was in the bathroom for like half an hour and i made a joke about hoping it wasnt an engineering student and everyone in line laughed nervously and stopped making eye contact with me

was that engineering student you, max

oh max