Terrorism in 'Murica (aka The Homeland)

I'm not sure what I think about that. Of course it was terrorism, but was it orchestrated, religious terrorism, or just some nut who was pissed off about something?

so the father of the guy who tried to blow up the plane to detroit says he warned u.s. authorities about his son. unfortunately the father is a nigerian banker. his email probably didn't make it past the spam filters.

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

I wish assholes would stop trying to blow things up too.

it would be a good new year's resolution for assholes imo.

F'real. Assholes' Charter.

I hope it leads straight back to Cheney (just kidding but this story was the first thing I thought of)

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/jan-june09/nigeria_04-24.html

Corruption Case Exposes Scope of Bribery in Nigeria

Last year, Albert Jack Stanley, the former CEO of KBR, pleaded guilty to bribery for masterminding the payment of more than $180 million to Nigerian officials. PBS Frontline correspondent Lowell Bergmen reports on the damage done by large-scale bribery in that country.

why do all the news reports keep saying this bomb was made by a top al qaeda bomb maker - the shit did not go off - whoever made it is not a top bomb maker

and srsly why not detonate the bomb in the bathroom where no one will disturb yr terror

overall, not impressed

aside from the 9/11 bastards, these terrorists seem less competent than the Weather Underground.

srsly guy gotten tooken down by a dutch filmmaker A DUTCH FILMMAKER smh

Theo wahtshisname avenged

ws dutch filmmaker tbh

I sure am glad we're fighting these guys in remote Afghan villages. Each Taliban Pashtun sheep herder we kill is one less rich British educated Nigerian terrorist to worry about.

it's a little comforting that the whole on-board chem-lab thing is hard to do effectively. but it sounds like dude had enough explosive on him to do the job. and apart from the people he would've killed, imagine the insane right-wing braying about america under attack -- on christmas, no less -- while obama frolics in hawaii. it's not as if anyone caught this guy, everybody just got lucky.

has anyone flown yet since this? i am not looking forward to manchester-newark-sfo in a couple of days.

not sure my bladder can deal with the new era tbqh

god, i cannot imagine that flight, caek. fucking nightmarish bullshit.

am doing Gatwick -> Orlando next week. not exactly looking forward to (1) flight and (2) Gatwick security which is hellish bad at the best of times.

gatwick is the worst place on earth. you have my sympathies.

assuming everything runs on time, 2010 starts for me at 5am GMT Jan 1 and ends at 1am PST Jan 2. YAAAAAAAOOOOOOW. and of course nothing will run on time now.

wonder if cutty can meet me in arrivals at EWR w/ vaporizer.

lol "2010 ends on Jan 2". i wish.

You sound like a terrist, flying crazy routes from Londonistan and calling for the end of the world.

i am taking an implausible number of hard drives in hand luggage too (no joke).

and i'm flying back LAX to munich. would not be surprised if i get tased just a little bit.

jus a lil tasing lets all be cool

Hoekstra on Fox yesterday all but blaming Obama admin.

The government was vague about the steps it was taking, saying that it wanted the security experience to be “unpredictable” and that passengers would not find the same measures at every airport — a prospect that may upset airlines and travelers alike.

^^^ awesome

Airline officials also said the carriers were told to turn off the maps on in-flight entertainment systems that show a plane’s location. The rule apparently was intended to prevent travelers from knowing when a plane had reached the United States. However, industry officials pointed out there are route maps in the backs of airline magazines, and that a traveler could simply time the journey using a watch.

^^^ lol

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

I'm sorta surprised an airline hasn't tried to go the El Al route but on a bigger scale, and offer, for a higher price, higher security: i.e. having their own security in addition to the airports'. I'd think some people would be willing to pay more for this, and others wouldn't, so the market could support both kinds of fliers.

Where can I read about how things work on El Al?

I think people on long flights are 20 times likelier to eat each other without the distraction of the lil traveling airplane.

why do all the news reports keep saying this bomb was made by a top al qaeda bomb maker - the shit did not go off - whoever made it is not a top bomb maker

why is any possible threat to america from any source overstated and over-reported?

re. El Al, the wikipedia entry has the right details.

The BBC was reporting that the route maps will only be off for the last hour. Seems completely retarded regardless. They're not detailed enough if you're aiming for a specific small conurbation, and any idiot can figure out when they've crossed from Canadian to U.S. airspace.

wow at El Al security.

Does the precise location of the plane you're trying to destroy matter that much?

presumably it has greater political impact if it happens in the U.S.

when youre flying into new york you can look out the window and see new york

yeah (re El Al); I have friends who would gladly pay for that kind of security---you'd think a market as lucrative as the airline market would support such a business.

how much is the typical price premium for El Al? double? extra 25%

imo the market for luxury airline security isnt that great - its already the safest thing in the world

joe will you come out to EWR on new year's day and do yoga with me y/n?

that sounds really lovely but im up in vermont for the next few months

btw factoid: i have never set foot in the newark airport

ladies and gentlemen we may or may not be approaching anything. we cannot confirm if we are beginning our descent. our suggestion that you return your seats to their upright position should not be taken as a sign of anything. maybe we just think you need to sit up a little straighter. we should have you on the ground ... eventually. our flight crew will be bringing around blindfolds, which we suggest you don for your safety and ours.

xp, nm. i only have 4 hours and i will probably be getting a little tased for most of that time.

lol

also, they are apparently leaving the cabin lights on for the duration.

Oh I cannot fucking WAIT for this. Cheers Al-Qaeda dudes.

was gonna say if u were trying to explode a plane over a particular city just buy ticket to that city then wait till the plane started getting pretty close to the ground then id blow it up - no maps or watches necessary

I'm not sure about how much of a premium El Al flights cost; I just priced a Paris-Tel Aviv flight for next month to check, and it was cheaper on El Al than on Air France.

If they do turn the maps off, I still don't think that'll stop the terrorists

what they should do is make everyone surrender their bombs before boarding - the rest of it would be unnecessary

http://i49.tinypic.com/fkv62t.jpg

'the pope'

he did this

tackling lady is hero

curses foiled again

http://todustyoushallreturn.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/benedict-with-cross1.jpg

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

the irony was... it was osama bin laden

the further irony was... he was just feeling sick he wasnt even plotting anything

the even further irony was... even though he wasnt plotting anything my wisecrack turned him against americans forever

the ultimate irony... jews did 9/11

... from an amtrak bathroom

its all connected

ok no tv wtfffffff http://gawker.com/5435131/jetblue-pilots-agonized-announcement-the-tsas-draconian-reactionary-rules

ill vote against obama dont test me tsa

(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)

― dome plow (gbx), Monday, December 28, 2009 2:05 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark

"it is at least half our own fault"

ah.... no.

fuck knows how to prevent these bastards from doing what they do, but this is mad. rights or wrongs of the afghanistan war aside, you can't do foreign policy based on whether it will annoy radical islamists/any other crazy motherfucker.

im guessing that the american media's hysteria produces this kind of response. in england the media is calmer; but then, england is also much more tolerant of radical islam. this guy, product of my university, is partly "our bad" and his dad is rightly peeved.

The point isn't whether it will annoy some already crazy motherfucker, it's whether US foreign policy will give birth to new crazy motherfuckers.

Britain also has post-colonial baggage x10000 and part of acknowledging it is dealing with a multitude of groups that have a sideline in using homemade explosives to underscore their grievances. The American right is in complete denial about the flipside of USA! USA! being the kind of post-imperialist baggage that has explosives in it.

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 is rational.*

tbh i think they should just get on with building this thing already: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_tunnel

The main barriers to constructing such a tunnel are cost—as much as $12 trillion[1]—and the limits of current materials science.

pfft.

After 9/11 (and a decade of living in a country used to taking precautions against suspect devices, whether IRA or nail bomb etc.) the paranoid narcissism of the average lo-info American ('they're gonna bomb my local mall!') became to me akin to those male homophobes who think any random gay man is eyeing them up for a cornholing.

I don't think it's the average American who cares about airline terrorism as much as it is people who fly frequently---that is to say, it's an elite concern, hence the attention this gets from the chattering class.

I don't have a great feeling for how much terrorism against malls and the like concerns non-elites; my recollection from polls is that it's about the same in the US and UK.

That scheme is crazy - what they should do is reclaim land west from Portugal and east from New York until they're close enough to build a bridge across.

Most frequent flyers I know are more annoyed with the inconvenience of being pawed by min-wage imbeciles at Security than are afraid of terrorism. It's the people who don't fly (or fly to a cheap holiday once or twice a year) who let loose with all the paranoid shit. My mom, who is somewhere in the middle, is more scared of a backyard incident than an onboard one. I've seen her get a bit chafey when asked to remove her jewelry at a checkpoint but mostly she's like everyone else going airside, rolling their eyes at the thought of shoe removal.

Britain also has post-colonial baggage x10000 and part of acknowledging it is dealing with a multitude of groups that have a sideline in using homemade explosives to underscore their grievances. The American right is in complete denial about the flipside of USA! USA! being the kind of post-imperialist baggage that has explosives in it.

― days of wine and neuroses (suzy), Monday, December 28, 2009 11:13 AM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

don't agree we have a large amount of baggage with this guy tbh. complex-ish issue, but -- i live with a rich-parented nigerian, and also with a less rich guy-whose-dad-was-a-colonial-administrator in nigeria. we all *seem* to get along. i don't think this bomber, born into wealth some decades after independence, had a legitimate grievance against the (no doubt nefarious and perfidious and generally terrible) british.

i can understand how subjectively he may feel differently, but HMG does do its fair share of handwringing and mea-culpa'ing about the dreadful legacy of colonialism. not sure what else it is supposed to do; but were it to go further, into the realm of reparations (which to me seems historically moronic but ne way) -- is this chap really one of the victims? his father at least seems to think not.

the question isnt "is this specific nigerian terrorist justified in his actions against the US" (spoiler: no) its "what actions has the US govt taken both directly and indirectly that lead to conditions where this is seen as a legitimate way to air grievances" (answer: take your pick)

but my guess, given that my mayne is talking specifically about the UK, is that this is a US/UK divide thing

don't want 2 sound like charles krauthammer (tho: balla name) but if you tailor policy around not offending the nutters then... that is not a good thing. we have this talk every time, but imo there is a difference between a grievance and a total and all-consuming hatred of the decadent west/the jews/etc. etc. maybe this guy is single-issue and im all wrong and jumping to conclusions, but the last round of british-based bombers (who lived down my street) certainly were *not* making a "rational response to british foreign policy" or that have you. they really did have a problem with... women going to nightclubs, etc. that is not a "legitimate" grievance.

xpost

yes this is really a uk thing and the iffiness of the british left in opposing radical islam.

right, but were not talking about "tailoring policy," were talking about, you know, "do you or do you not arm mujahedin" (no) or "to what extent should we be partnering with a country that pumps money into hardline madrassas" (less than we are now) or "how can we minimize civilian casualties" (stop invading countries)

i.e. its not about mollifying radicals its about doing everything "we" can to not aid their radicalization in the first place

I see history mayne's point: some motherfucker is obsessed with English women showing lots of leg, and it's silly to think that ceasing to bomb the shit of civilians in Yemen, e.g., is going to change that. Arguably the crazy motherfuckers are getting material support by people with "legit" grievances, but Qutb-like psychos aren't going to stop being psycho even if we do clean up our foreign policy. Maybe they'd stop if we installed sharia, who knows. And those of us who always turn to blaming Western foreign policy for creating terrorism are using the terrorism we've actually had in the US and UK this decade as a proxy war against Western militarism.

in the last sentence I mean: the actual terrorism in the West we've had this decade (e.g. 9/11, Madrid, London, shoe bomber and the burning blanket guy) was done by crazies obsessed with Western decadence. Turning the discussion to Western militarism as having caused these episodes both misses the focus of these crazies' obsessions, and suits a Leftist agenda aimed at ending Western militarism.

theyre obsessed with western militarism too!

i mean this isnt "just" about western decadence for "them" or for "us"

yeah I'm just trying to articulate history mayne's Krauthammerian point (whether it's in good faith or not I don't care): in this view their obsession with Western decadence is what gets the one's who've actually acted in the West, to act---as opposed to the USS Cole bombers, e.g., who may have been concerned with US militarism more than our sailors fucking Yemeni whores or whatever.

there will always be crazy people obsessed with purity and decadence. the question is whether these people become violent radicals or whether they, on the other hand, just become that nutter rocking back and forth in the corner muttering about whores. it is endlessly demonstrable that foreign occupation, violence and torture radicalize people. remember that quttub was tortured. so was zawahiri. either by the cia or cia-trained agents.

Apparently the seat-back maps are back on, so they didn't win this time.

imo the most important factor in u.s. foreign misadventuring isnt necessarily the creation of crazy angry people but the encouraging of tolerance for their loco views - if the absolute nutters are screaming death to the great satan a much bigger chunk of normals is going all whatevs ive got bigger problems than trying to defend some country of assholes

you're making me wonder if there's an iranian version of lolspeak and for that i love you ice cr?m

All my Nigerian friends are from Christian families and funnel their post-colonial ambivalence through things like being annoyed about Shell Oil and globalism.

imo the most important factor in u.s. foreign misadventuring isnt necessarily the creation of crazy angry people but the encouraging of tolerance for their loco views

otm. and this works in both directions, obviously -- the actions of al qaida open up space in the u.s. domestic discourse for dick cheney and the mad torturers of Neoconnia. and really this suits the interests of radicals on both sides and can end up trapping everybody in endless cycles of retaliation.

not really sure about that. the last time i checked pretty much everybody hated al qaeda and dick cheney.

well cheney never cared about personal popularity because he understood that it didn't matter much to what he was trying to do. 9/11 gave him the opportunity to push government in a lot of directions that would have been impossible under non-9/11 circumstances, and he took advantage of it.

fuck knows how to prevent these bastards from doing what they do, but this is mad. rights or wrongs of the afghanistan war aside, you can't do foreign policy based on whether it will annoy radical islamists/any other crazy motherfucker.

what i said was kind of a throwaway comment, and fuck if i know how you pulled this from it

it is endlessly demonstrable that foreign occupation, violence and torture radicalize people. remember that quttub was tortured. so was zawahiri. either by the cia or cia-trained agents.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, December 28, 2009 1:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

both of them were tortured (which im not defending, obviously) because they were already radicalized and were deemed a threat to the egyptian state. zawahiri in particular was a violent radical before his imprisonment.

perhaps left to its own devices, the muslim brotherhood would have settled down to harmless nutterdom; perhaps without the cold war, the CIA would never have supported bad regimes the world over (and regimes in general would have been naturally good); perhaps if, in the present, the US refused to arm israel, then we wouldn't have young idiots trying to blow up jets.

but perhaps it would take more than that?

maybe when this guy recovers he can talk us through his thinking -- what it would take to assuage him, his vision for a peaceful afghanistan, etc.

i wish US foreign policy were cleaner, but i'm not convinced that it's possible or in every case desirable to run it without making enemies.

All my Nigerian friends are from Christian families and funnel their post-colonial ambivalence through things like being annoyed about Shell Oil and globalism.

― days of wine and neuroses (suzy), Monday, December 28, 2009 3:01 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah my housemate is christian. none of the nigerians i've lived with in the uk have been annoyed by globalism to my knowledge -- i mean, our entire situation, their being educated here, is a product *of* globalism. (and so indirectly, often, of the oil industry.) we all feel ambivalent about the material bases of modern western-style society, of course.

perhaps left to its own devices, the muslim brotherhood would have settled down to harmless nutterdom; perhaps without the cold war, the CIA would never have supported bad regimes the world over (and regimes in general would have been naturally good); perhaps if, in the present, the US refused to arm israel, then we wouldn't have young idiots trying to blow up jets.

but perhaps it would take more than that?

not sayin that yr doing this, but: that last part is what's often leveraged by the US media (don't know about UK) and talking heads and bloviating holiday relations into ugly generalizations about ragheads and apologies for actual, regrettable, shouldn't-have-happened foreign policy missteps. "it" taking "more than that" so often scans (to me) as "there's just no changin those ~muslims, they'll NEVER be happy," as if that applies to normal, non-radicals and not just obsessive nutters.

but the point isn't about *all* muslims, but about the actual terrorists we've seen from 9/11 onward in the West. Look at what motivated *them*; and ask to what extent changing Western foreign policy would have assuaged them.

i know it isn't! i said that that point (about the actual radicals) is very often used by domestic morons to tar *all* muslims. which is why it gets my hackles up, etc.

obviously a lot of things, internal and external, led to the rise of fundamentalist islam over the last several decades. and it's not a morally straightforward story in any way, not least because there aren't many real good guys you can point to either in the middle east or in other countries' dealings with the region. but i think the fundamentalists themselves are essentially at this point a cult -- it's a big cult, with a lot of cultural complexities in different countries, but the point is that having come into existence it is not going to fade just because or even if the conditions that helped bring it into existence start to change. it is running on its own gas (literally and figuratively) and it's going to be a problem at some scale for a long time to come. the problem is that we (i.e. the west) has to somehow separate how we deal with the death cult from how we deal more broadly and diplomatically with the region at large.

as for whether or not changing foreign policy would have assuaged some now blown-up terrorists: it is a mystery. i'm not at all suggesting that we conduct foreign policy in a way specifically designed to not annoy terrorists, but the idea that our mistakes don't ~really~ have that much to do with radicalization (or popular support/tolerance of radicalization) is patently absurd.

this may be apples and oranges, but the guys setting road side bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan are not doing it because women go to nightclubs in London.

but some of the people supplying the money that buys the bombs are doing it because of that. or they're doing it to ingratiate themselves with the local religious leadership. or who knows, it's all complicated and it's not an either/or situation.

xp right---Bush's assurance that we were fighting them over there so that they don't fight us over here conflated two different kinds of terrorists. They're not unrelated, but they're not motivated by exactly the same concerns, either.

i'm not convinced that it's possible or in every case desirable to run it without making enemies

lol who has even tried to convince you of this? you sound like rumsfeld - "do i think you can have a foreign policy that doesn't create a single enemy in the entire world? no."

all we're talkin about here, history mayne, is what makes pseudo-qaeda nutters think it's a good idea to kill western civilians. there is obviously not one answer. it's a big, weird subject. but your take appears to be that they get radicalized all by themselves, somewhere deep in their own minds, by some ineluctable process. ok, but that seems to ignore a whole pile of evidence that correlates violent occupation and you know, decades of repression and torture training techniques, with hmmm a bunch of people who have violent impulses towards those they feel are responsible.

(though i doubt the thought process is that clear)

(and in the case of a wealthy nigerian there has to be a lot of odd vicarious sympathy action goin on somehow)

but perhaps it would take more than that?

naturally i assume you are talking about cultural exchange programs and education initiatives here

well resentment is a complicated thing. just look at the american south. there's still a lot of cultural resentment there, which still drives the politics and religion of the region in a lot of ways, but the sources of it are hard to separate out. there are legitimate grievances -- the population is historically poorer, less healthy, less educated, has been economically exploited by outside interests -- but then there are a lot of grievances that outsiders are less likely to think of as legitimate. and in any given person, those resentments are likely to be all bound up together.

resentment, anger, grievances = one thing
terrorist acts = another

not loving the implication that just because scaling back american militarism wont cure terrorism completely we should stop trying

xpost

sure, and obviously it takes a lot of factors to get from one to the other. it's just, even if you're going talk "root causes," there's rarely the kind of clarity that anyone on any ideological side would prefer.

otm. and this works in both directions, obviously -- the actions of al qaida open up space in the u.s. domestic discourse for dick cheney and the mad torturers of Neoconnia. and really this suits the interests of radicals on both sides and can end up trapping everybody in endless cycles of retaliation.

― hellzapoppa (tipsy mothra), Monday, December 28, 2009 10:06 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not really sure about that. the last time i checked pretty much everybody hated al qaeda and dick cheney.

― Tracer Hand, Monday, December 28, 2009 10:09 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

u must admit they had a good run

i know what you mean, but they both narrowly missed defeats that would have resulted in them being forgotten completely - cheney with the '00 election and al-q having been shunned by basically everyone and driven into the hinterlands of afghanistan. naturally once assholes like this succeed in grabbing the spotlight they will attract other assholes, like some kind of asshole magnet, but after the initial bump as far as i can tell cheney's actions have brought only deepening derision and mistrust, and al-q's only substantial friends these days appear to be certain ratfuckers in the pakistani intelligence services

i personally find it v heartening that people somewhat tired of the bush/qeada codependent shitstorm after a while - and i think yr right that there was a perfectly inauspicious moment that made it all possible - but theres still a mighty appetite in america and worldwide for all sorts of dire conquest

ok phew dont hav to vote 4 palin http://www.businessinsider.com/live-tv-is-back-on-jetblue-flights-2009-12

Yeah, ABC Radio just reported that the DHS/TSA were hastily scaling back the additional restrictions

in case anyone is wondering why we dont have a TSA head its because some republican senator has a secret hold on the nomination

once again a+ to the framers of our constitutions for creating the most useless body in modern politics

i've been asked to arrive four hours before departure for check-in

tbf the senate at this point has mostly created itself - iirc the only weird thing thats constitutional per say is unproportional representation

Customers traveling from any Canadian destination to the United States should be advised that effective December 28, Transport Canada (a department of the Canadian government) put into place a ban on any carry-on baggage that customers would have access to during flight.

Items that are excluded from this restriction include small purses, cameras, coats, items for care of infants, laptop computers, diplomatic or consular bags, crutches, canes, walkers, containers carrying life-sustaining items, medications and medical devices, musical instruments and special-needs items. This directive is in effect until 9:00 p.m. EST on December 29, 2009, although it may be extended.

o u too now canada

I'd love to see a Thick of It style dramatization of the "decisions" that lead to these policies.

But my main concern is whether airplane cabins have finally been equipped with rolls of duct tape. It is nearly 2010 people.

Update: my writer friend who was concerned about profiling found that BA moved a white guy into his exit row seat and shunted him up to the middle of the plane. If they are going to do this to people with 'funny names' (his words) maaaaybe they should get one education and learn about the difference between Hindu and Muslim?

"The warning that the bathrooms would be shut down led to lines 10 people deep at each lavatory. A demand by one attendant that no could read anything either elicited gasps of disbelief and howls of laughter.

Book bombs, it was only a matter of time until someone in the government remembered they used to hide squirt guns and contraband in them in high school.

Removal of fake arms and legs ought to also be on the slate.

Colostomy and urostomy bags, too, because they have the capacity for some volume.

No using of the bathroom because you might be removing your 'plan' filled with something or other. (See Papillon.)

Running discussion and comment carried over from Sunday on the bomber's underwear bomb, efficacy, overreaction, weak leadership and the usual ease with which failed plots turn into wins when the country acts like it has a glass jaw.

At my blog:

http://bit.ly/74SqRz

Thanks for the link, Gorge / DD.

Flew home from Knoxville today. No problems, nothing different, plane on map still there.

ok, i admit that if this kind of story came out under the bush administration, i'd be prone to "what a bunch of keystone kop"-type head-shaking. so fair's fair -- what a bunch of keystone kops. i know the communications problems and information-aggregating is more complicated than it always seems after the fact, but there were sort of an awful lot of red flags here. (and i also know that a lot of those problems are structural and institutional and transcend presidential administrations, and that the republicans are being complete idiot hypocrites in all their phony outrage, but that's just par for the course really. it's always been clear that in any attack under a democratic administration, there will be no rallying-behind-the-president, that's not how they play the game.)

The system clearly didn't work on several levels. The intelligence community didn't recognize this guy as a legit threat, the State Dept. was oblivious to some obvious red flags, the flight list vetting process probably should have prevented him from ever getting on the plane, and the airport screening system failed to detect a bomb. All of this is true, but the lesson here is that no system will ever be foolproof, or even particularly effective. We can pump billions of dollars into the problem and erode civil liberties and cause major headaches and inconveniences, and it still won't stop terrorism from happening. All this hand wringing and finger pointing misses that fundamental truth.

rip cia dudes (not in 'murica but still)

We can pump billions of dollars into the problem and erode civil liberties and cause major headaches and inconveniences, and it still won't stop terrorism from happening. All this hand wringing and finger pointing misses that fundamental truth.

― Super Cub, Thursday, December 31, 2009 9:14 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

this is obviously otm. with the depressing corollary that the bigger we build our "security" apparatus, the more dedicated the apparatus becomes to preserving and expanding its own institutional power and resources. terrorism is in a way a bigger gift to the military-industrial megillah than the cold war, because while it doesn't necessarily produce vast investments on the scale of thousands and thousands of warheads, it is also much less likely to evaporate as a persistent threat -- because all you need to keep it going is one guy with a bomb every couple of years. which makes the failures of the system work to its own advantage.

"terrorism is in a way a bigger gift to the military-industrial megillah than the cold war"

otm

according to my airline, security arrangements are back to pre-Dec 25 for UK-US flights

also I'm kinda puzzled why the US government is in the business of providing airline security anyway, as opposed to the airlines themselves.

airlines cant even make bags go from one place to another reliably

i can't imagine how insane security would be if the airlines ran it

If airlines are no longer giving me my free bag of cashews I at least want to know that my bags aren't packing shoe bombs.

I guess I'm thinking like a right-winger but it seems to me that The Market could provide a better airline security situation than the crazy, useless, time-waste we have now.

yeah prob not

problem with market-based security is kind of the same problem we already have. if the incentive is to get more money into the system, then every failure of security just leades to more investment. if it created incentives for anything, it would be for them to send a guy with explosives through every couple of years to almost blow up a plane.

if it created incentives for anything, it would be for them to send a guy with explosives through every couple of years to almost blow up a plane.

would watch this movie btw

I don't trust The Market with security situations. First, providing security is a bedrock reason for government. If it shouldn't do that, it's hard to imagine what it should do. Second, for a host of reasons, market incentives are not consistent with good security measures.

But yeah, I'd watch that movie too.

wait, so you're saying that if you let Business handle airline security, rather than the government, then Business would do whatever it takes to get more money, including tricking people into thinking the risks are worse than they really are?

duh

El Al to thread

so is that what's going on now? b/c Business is already making big green off the nonsense in place now

airlines could get people to fly based on the "fly us & you could be on the new reality show 'To Catch A Terrorist'"

people'll do anything to be on TV

yeah we talked about El Al a few days ago, and it's what's getting me thinking about how they do security so well and how we do it so shittily.

don't trust The Market with security situations. First, providing security is a bedrock reason for government. If it shouldn't do that, it's hard to imagine what it should do. Second, for a host of reasons, market incentives are not consistent with good security measures.

Good idea. Unfortunately, not what rules in the US, which explains much. The market has been left to rule entire swaths of national security, making it entirely into the national security business. What that means is they get their people into positions where they right security policy which does nothing but favor their business interests. This is very noticeable in the outsourcing of security and intelligence work within the agencies of the natsec infrastructure ot private business.

The marquee example is Blackwater, but -- really it's all across the board. The big players like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Science Applications, myriads of defense contractors, have all expanded market rule into homeland security.

I've written about it quite a lot, for various places including blogging. One recent summary, focused on national cybersecurity issues is here:

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2009/12/cybersecurity-schwick-earlier-today-j.html

wait, so you're saying that if you let Business handle airline security, rather than the government, then Business would do whatever it takes to get more money, including tricking people into thinking the risks are worse than they really are?

That's one way of putting it although it doesn't perfectly capture what really happens.

What happens is the natsec businesses oversell their undeveloped and imperfect technologies as perfect answers, get them bought and paid for by the taxpayer, and these only provide security theatre. They don't provide the solution originally promised, but after the fact this becomes immaterial.

Or they provide leased contract workers at premium rates, more than what the government would pay employees indigenously. In fact, they get into the business of poaching civil servants and turning them around, after they've been trained by the government and the taxpayer dime, and lease them back to the same agencies at higher rates.

You'll have noticed this has nothing to do with improving national security.

if it created incentives for anything, it would be for them to send a guy with explosives through every couple of years to almost blow up a plane.

Already been done and being done. There are entire operations devoted to this. The problem is they only approach the problem from an unlimited resources what-can-we-do-as-Americans-with-anything-we-want-on-the-plate approach. This isn't the same as real life, where the terrorists are forced to come up with things like underwear bombs or things cobbled together by people who totally lack resources, both material and human, which is the opposite of the US model.

I am now officially getting drunk in preparation for tomorrow.

Additional security was a joke. I'm white btw.

Now at the gate and desperate for a wee. Pro-tip for ailsa: depending on your gate, you may not be able to go to the toilet for a couple of hours once you clear the additional security.

Got my junk touched though. Start the year as I hope to go on.

The first time I flew through Heathrow (in 1997 I think) the security guy fondled my nuts so thoroughly that I thought he should have bought me dinner first.

two of the cia dudes killed a few days ago were dudettes and one of them was a friend of mine from high school, if what i'm hearing is correct. all i know is she was killed a few days ago by a bomb.

v sorry to hear that

yikes, that's horrible.

have to say that after everything i'm sort of shocked that blackwater (oops, XE) employees are still on CIA payroll. how many fuck ups do these guys have to make? or are there just few or no other options?

background on that attack http://www.slate.com/id/2240446

just got back from nyc, flew in from manchester on 27 and came back through the fucking chaos that was an evacuated newark airport last night.

on the flight there they turned off the map AND the movies, because it was all one system but yeah pretty dumb anyone can use a watch and figure out roughly where they are - or look out window.

newark last night was horrendous, and almost put me off flying to the states ever again. 7 hours stuck in the entrance area with thousands of other people - nobody telling us what was going on for the most part.

the bonus was that when i finally got back through the gates my reserved seat was taken and they put me up in business class. excellent!

I just read about the Newark evac!!!!! FUCKING A, there are not the words to say what that must have been like. It makes my experience on Dec 21 look tame and I thought people were going to riot then.

thanks for the article link, cr?m. i don't know for certain that she died in that bombing, but the lack of info being released and the timing suggests that it's probably the case. she wasn't a soldier, i know that much. her recent facebook updates are tough to read.

yeah laurel what was really strange was how calm everybody was about it. what really sucked was that when it happened and we got hoarded out, i was about twenty mins from my flight taking off!

i've been in lots of travel chaos situations but this one was just something else, on top of which i was suffering from some sort of stomach virus which was great.

i think seeing the little kid poo himself, and then hold it in his hand was as close as i got to just walking the fuck out of there.

Bloody hell, that evac must've been horrible. What strikes me in the (thankfully rare) occasions where I've experienced some delay or whatever at airports is that they have a lot of procedures they can go through but none of them ever involve an effective way of communicating to the public what they should be doing.

tbf ive had similar experiences at jfk sans terror

Latest foiled terror plot (or "plot")

Oregon terror averted

These cases make me very uncomfortable. These guys seem like serious wannabes with no means or contact with larger organizations. They are set-up. Maybe it's best to be rid of wannabes before they find a way to be the real thing (or just get a gun and go on a shooting spree), but this pre-emptive law-enforcement approach freaks me out.

Further reference:

Pre-emptive approach controversial

Washpost headline:

FBI foils its own elaborate bomb plot in Oregon

hmm

A bomb left along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade was a sophisticated explosive that had a remote detonator and the ability to cause many casualties, an official familiar with the case said Wednesday.

The bomb, which was defused without incident on Monday, was the most potentially destructive he had ever seen, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release information about the investigation.

yeah this is fucked. can't wait to see where it goes.

Greenwald on the mammoth boondoggle of "homeland security" projects:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/08/29/terrorism/index.html

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

Last year, McClatchy characterized this threat in similar terms: "undoubtedly more American citizens died overseas from traffic accidents or intestinal illnesses than from terrorism." The March, 2011, Harper's Index expressed the point this way: "Number of American civilians who died worldwide in terrorist attacks last year: 8 -- Minimum number who died after being struck by lightning: 29." That's the threat in the name of which a vast domestic Security State is constructed, wars and other attacks are and continue to be launched, and trillions of dollars are transferred to the private security and defense contracting industry at exactly the time that Americans -- even as they face massive wealth inequality -- are told that they must sacrifice basic economic security because of budgetary constraints.

silver had a similar thing on the statistical likelihood of dying in a plane that's been the target of a terrorist attack

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

A bomb left along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade was a sophisticated explosive that had a remote detonator and the ability to cause many casualties, an official familiar with the case said Wednesday.

The bomb, which was defused without incident on Monday, was the most potentially destructive he had ever seen, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to release information about the investigation.

Safe to say 99% of Americans have forgotten or never knew that this ever happened?

So are we gonna talk about this Chelsea bombing or what

Yeah I kept looking for an active thread. I'm willing to admit I'm a bit freaked out. I walk down that block every work day.

Glad you are ok

I suspect its more domestic terrorism/lone looney.

Trump will probably tweet that it's ISIS in a few minutes

It's hard to countenance this occurring on the same day as the charity marathon pipe bombing in NJ and there being no connection. But I guess it's possible.

In general the notion of 'bomb in Chelsea' makes one start imagining motives but then the specific locations of the bombs just seem pretty empty of significance. IDGI.

idiot israels on fb all "why are americans so slow to admit the truth" like i understand that in yr country you generally only have one source of terrorism but god bless the US we have so many sources of potential bomb making that we really cannot just jump to one conclusion immediately w/out evidence. it could be right-wing extremists. it could be left-wing extremists. it could be lone nuts. we have a long history of all kinds of groups trying to blow ppl up.

Cant remember the last time left wing extremists bombed anything in the US tbh

But yes i agree w yr overall pt

3 acts of terror, broadly speaking, in one day :/

St. Cloud MN stabber seems to be in the same bucket as Orlando dude ie disorganized sort of Islamist terror

Sort-of-islamist should have hyphenated for clarity

Yeah, thank god it's not worse than it might have been. But we're not in a stage where stuff is ordered from on high, this may have had a certain motive, but how do we react to this dispersed, autonomous ideology?

http://gizmodo.com/explosion-reported-in-manhattan-cause-unknown-1786763151

I don't react. I keep moving, quickly.

So they said definitely intentional, second unexploded bomb similar design to Boston marathon bomb (design can be found on internet), checking for links to NJ race pipe bomb but so far no link to (international) Islamic terror.

It's remarkable that no one died, it was a really powerful bomb. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/nyregion/new-york-explosion-chelsea.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=span-ab-top-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

Luke McConnell, who was visiting from Colorado, was headed toward a restaurant on West 27th Street when the blast occurred.

“I felt it, like a concussive wave, heading towards me. Then there was a cloud of white smoke that came from the left side of 23rd Street near Sixth,” Mr. McConnell said. “There was no fire, just smoke.”

Witnesses said they could feel the explosion from several blocks away. Daniel Yount, 34, said he was standing on the roof of a building at 25th Street and Avenue of the Americas with friends.

“We felt the shock waves go through our bodies,” Mr. Yount said.

Seems like ISIS loners. They really underperformed this time, thank god. nypost fwiw: http://nypost.com/2016/09/18/there-will-be-more-chilling-911-call-after-the-chelsea-explosion/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunch_of_Guys

lol come on

5 people taken into custody

http://abc7ny.com/news/multiple-people-taken-into-custody-in-connection-with-chelsea-explosion/1517053/

another explosion in NJ: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nyc-explosion-fbi-cops-investigate-vehicle-interest-n-y-new-n650306?cid=sm_tw

Shit.

Suspect named for the Chelsea bomb, 28 yo Afghanistan born naturalized us citizen of NJ.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2016/sep/19/us-authorities-investigating-new-jersey-explosive-devices-live-updates

home raided

iPhone extreme alert during Monday morning commute is one way to change the dialectic

I know this is 'letting the terrorists win' but I am strongly tempted to call out today

The NJ stuff is happening about 10 minutes' walk from my apartment.

Hell, if them winning is you taking a personal day then fine, let them have this one.

Personally, I feel like the 'letting them win' thing is more applicable if bombs go off in NY and NJ and you decide to stay home with the curtains drawn even though you live in Wichita. But if there's danger of subsequent events in a place where shit has already gone down, it's only natural to be cautious.

Did it just now. My boss was cool about it.

Sounds like NY and NJ are handling this very professionally and thoroughly, but then, I don't have TV. Maybe TV is hysterical. Probably so.

When is TV not hysterical.

Big Bang Theory?

I don't have tv either. I think they'll handle this well but I'ma give them a day to find the rest of the cached fucking bombs.

Xpost Oh shit, multiple meanings not intentional.

XD

Fp'd for microaggression

Now you're definitely letting the terrorists win.

making people's phones play a siren sound is not "handling it very professionally" imo but i guess it's not boston-level insanity

coming home from manhattan over the weekend while cops ran around in the subways yelling F IS CLOSED F IS CLOSED POLICE ACTIVITY GO HOME makes a fella nervous for sure

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CsuXx-LWIAAgyjw.jpg:small

lol

suspect captured in Linden NJ after firing at a cop

Nice

Just seen film of him being taken away on a stretcher.

https://twitter.com/ItsTonyNow/status/777892751757180928

tbf i imagine they're checking for weapons?

P sure that's a direct transcript.

They're checking for embedded cellphones.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fj1HFuaZrD0/ThJdI2QpQPI/AAAAAAAACgQ/esATtrnuZeo/s1600/PDVD_108.BMP

Maybe, given their constraints, they are implementing thus far extra-legal tickle torture tactics to get him to talk. They are going to get some stubbly SWAT dude to blow raspberries on his tummy until he spills the beans.

Disturbing new details in alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

New filings claim there was a Plan B the militiamen had drawn up, that involved a takeover of the Michigan capitol building by 200 combatants who would stage a week-long series of televised executions of public officials.

There was also a Plan C -- burning down the state house, leaving no survivors.

"economic anxiety"

Look, an armed coup is totally a reasonable response to not being able to get a haircut.

give me wings, or give me death

Look, an armed coup is totally a reasonable response to not being able to get a haircut.

Also gotta love that their backup plans were just as outlandish. Plan D was to hijack the Space Shuttle and pilot it into the Mackinac Bridge.

iirc that was actually Plan E, Plan D was to poison this year's crop of Traverse City cherries and hand deliver them to everyone at the statehouse.