Idiots

John Larkin · 2009-12-26T22:45:25+00:00

So a guy tried to detonate a bomb during the last hour of a flight.The TSA morons thus conclude that all terrorists detonate their bombsin the last hour, so make it illegal to get out of your seat duringthose 60 minutes. They are clearly assuming that the bombers aredumber than they are; I have my doubts.The real issue is why they let a Nigerian, festooned with explosives,on a terrorist watch list, onto the plane in the first place. Isuppose searching people who look like they might be terrorists wouldbe "profiling" or "invasion or privacy" or something.They did give my 90-year old father a full, very rude pull-asidescreening because he had a one-way ticket out of Louisiana afterKatrina. I once got super-harassed and triple searched because myticket had a "payment basis" of "A", and nobody knew what "A" meant. Ithink it meant American Express.(If they search you three times, they seem to be assuming that thefirst two searches were incompetant.)Idiots. Always fighting the last battle.John

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Martin Brown 16 years ago

Who can tell? The security guys certainly seem to think so.

That he was still alive? Or didn't leave before the hurricane struck?

That's mostly a US thing. One of my supervisors had permanent scarring from an encounter with your boys in blue. Another history lecturer was beaten to a pulp for jay walking. Your immigration officials are some of the most unpleasant individuals I have ever encountered. I get the impression they are just waiting for the opportunity to shoot someone who fails to stand behind the red line. US internal flight tickets of foreigners are marked unsubtly and they almost always get the treatment meted out to your father - no matter how unlikely a terrorist they are.

In the 80's I used to get pulled fairly often in the UK for looking like someone they were interested in and having components in my hand luggage that appear like detonators on Xray. They were always polite and professional with me. More recently post 9/11 at Heathrow they found a miniature screwdriver that had vanished into the seams of my carry-on bag. They got it out without doing any damage and then confiscated it. I must have been through dozens of airports with that thing in place.

I do find it a bit annoying that you can't buy a mail it back to me bag. It is a pain losing nail files and forgotten screwdrivers every time.

Same for a colleague who was hand carrying a high voltage rectifier stack for an emergency repair that looked for all the world like three sticks of dynamite in a box. He had all the documentation with him and contact numbers for trusted references - trouble was expected with this unit. Security agreed to open his bag out of sight of other passengers to avoid scaring them and having our guy lynched before take off.

Another absent minded colleague left his fat attache case unattended for a couple of minutes and by the time he had reported it stolen bomb disposal had it outside surrounded with sandbags after an Xray showed it was full of wires, blocks of something (chocolate) and electronic boards. He got a serious dressing down for leaving unattended luggage and wasting police time. But I was impressed how fast they had reacted.

Regards, Martin Brown

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Martin Brown 16 years ago

And US airport security was extremely sloppy pre 9/11. The security operatives were underpaid myopic ex taxi drivers with IQs to match. Some of them didn't even know how to use the expensive more effective gear. Training the operators properly costs money.

Getting the plane full was more important to them than anything else.

They up the exposure progressively each time. And it is true that some glasses in bigger lenses would show up very dark on Xrays. Bad news if you have unexposed high ASA film in the bag.

Swap the bottle and carry on a liquid bomb. They are *very* cagey now about bulk liquid explosives after finding someone doing a bit of clever chemistry and refilling "sealed" bottles from the base.

They are right to be wary. See for example:

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So long as you don't try to take it airside there is no problem. Same is true taking fresh fruit into Australia for example.

Containers like plastic bottles are a potential threat if they might have been tampered with. All stuff that is moved to airside is checked.

That is always the problem. The terrorists have first mover advantage because they can observe and study all the visible security measures. The security guys are stuck with the techniques they can apply without bringing the whole thing to a grinding halt with interminable queues.

The pros now look like they must be assembling things in clean rooms and hermetically sealed if our Nigerian "friend" did not set off sniffer alarms or dogs at Schiphol. I hope they got enough bits of his bomb to figure out exactly where the explosives came from.

I still want to know why he didn't get a full body scan.

Israel and the UK are a lot more practiced at doing what matters. Some of the US measures are pure theatre with no security gain.

Regards, Martin Brown

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Jan Panteltje 16 years ago

On a sunny day (Mon, 28 Dec 2009 23:54:53 +0000) it happened Dirk Bruere at NeoPax wrote in :

Now there is a use for a security pressure switch :-) One that detects weight and inhibits flushing.

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Jim Thompson 16 years ago

To make it clear that they are Democrats? ...Jim Thompson

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Jim Thompson 16 years ago

Poor clueless Dave. He's so clueless he could be on Obama's staff.

Have you started listening to Fox yet?

Better try it.

One more clueless outburst and you're history. ...Jim Thompson

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John Larkin 16 years ago

decompression.

difference broke the floor,

got unconscious,

passengers aboard.

formatting link

John

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Nico Coesel 16 years ago

No, David is right. It would have been more economic to buy a new piece of land for the Israelis and let the Palestinians go back where they used to live than to wage war in Afghanistan, Iraq and soon Yemen. The terrorists are currently hitting the US where it hurts most: in the wallet! And what does the US do? Run after a sausage like a stupid dog.

Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply indicates you are not using the right tools... nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.) --------------------------------------------------------------

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John Larkin 16 years ago

The Cold War, the struggle of Western thought against Communism, has been replaced with the struggle against fundamentalist Islam. There are many parallels. And a major realignment is taking place, China and Russia and the US on one side, the radical Islamic world and socialist loonies like Castro and Chavez on the other. Ironic, wot?

This isn't all about Israel. Neither Jordan nor Egypt want the Palestinians as their citizens or even visitors. Egypt is blockading Gaza just as hard as Israel.

I think W and crew recognized the culture clash and used the WMD thing as an excuse to plant a democracy in the heart of Islam, the only one in the region. The decision was strategic and historic, and it may just work.

John

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Jim Thompson 16 years ago

Naaaah! Just napalm 'em all ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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krw 16 years ago

No nukes? Wuss.

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Jim Thompson 16 years ago

I like the smell of slowly burning flesh ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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PeterD 16 years ago

Didn't it seem to 'compress' him as he was sucked out? I remember thinking that there was some very strange geometry in play in that scene.

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Jamie 16 years ago

If you're a fat pig, that gap can be filled! :)

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JosephKK 16 years ago

What was it that the Israelis did once to make a point? Something like=20 sew them up in pig skin and drown them? It had to completely exclude=20 any kind of "honorable" death. Maybe it was to let their own body=20 functions kill them.

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