Okay, another low-rent Jihadi tried to blow up a plane, and only succeeded in setting his groin on fire and getting his ass kicked by an angry Dutchman.
Ever-vigilant against the last attack, the TSA is now instructing passengers to brace for more probulating and to put their carry-on baggage someplace inaccessible, maybe out on the wing or something, which kind of defeats the purpose of carry-on baggage. (Of course, logic is rarely a strong suit in these kinds of decisions.) So now we're checking for box-cutters, shoe bombs, shampoo bombs... and it looks like we're about to get more serious about crotch-bombs and butt-bombs...
You know, sooner or later the average Westerner-on-the-street is going to get sick and tired of the probulating, and then they're just not going to let anybody named "Mohammed" ride in planes anymore. At which point the Jihadis will use their latest recruit, blond -haired and blue-eyed Dick Smith from Dubuque, to blow up the next one. And I'd expect things to get really ugly from there. The Qutbists decry the West as soulless, impersonal, mechanized: they would do well to remember that, along with animal husbandry, shoe-making and porno movies, another field the West has turned soulless, impersonal, and mechanized is genocide.
I don't think they have forgotten, I think they believe we would never do it.
ReplyDeleteThere are people still alive in Europe who cheerfully loaded Jews into boxcars. There are living Americans who incinerated thousands of men, women, and children in their beds at night, and came back to do it the next night, and the next, and so on. There is an ugly side of our culture that will kill people in wholesale lots without a qualm, and it shouldn't get poked with a stick, lest it wakes up.
ReplyDeleteAnd just after I'd given in and started flying again. *sigh*
ReplyDeleteIn other news, I'm driving to SHOT Show this year.
ReplyDeleteI know how to stop this. Put a bowl of pork rinds by the plane's door. You have to eat one while a stewardess watches or you don't get on the plane. If a Mooslum touches pork and dies he can't go to heaven and get all those virgins.
ReplyDelete"Put a bowl of pork rinds by the plane's door."
ReplyDeleteNice try, but that leaves out Jews and several Christian subsects that also keep dietary laws.
Maybe it would help if we enacted a Prohibition-type amendment to the Constitution - prohibiting "disarmed victim" zones like Chicago, planes and federal buildings.
ReplyDeleteWhen my Navy ship visited Haifa, Israel about 1977, all Israelis enjoy - each one of them - two years compulsory military service. When off-duty? They were required to keep their rifle on them.
Just imagine, if the military were to really represent every facet of society, that no one could effectively isolate any portion of the population from the realities of armed service or basic skill with arms.
If we could restrict travel to horse and buggy, or maybe camel back, then blowing up bunches of people wouldn't be so easy. And we could reassign TSA to sweeping horse poop off the streets.
"animal husbandry, shoe-making and porno movies"
ReplyDeleteBut surely you repeat youself.
About the pork rinds: during the siege of (if memory serves) Accra, in the first crusade, Moslem sailors disguised a ship as a Christian vessel, complete with crosses and lots of pigs running loose on deck to fool the Christian blockaders. It worked. They passed an inspection at sea by a Christian ship blockading the harbor, then turned and sprinted into the harbor to resupply the besieged Moslem garrison.
It's a shame about the Jews and other diet-law types, but I'm in favour of having a pint of beer and a pork-chop being a precondition of boarding any aircraft.
ReplyDeleteIt means I get a nice lunch before I have to cram my frame into a seat that Tommy Torquemada could have invented, at least.
...and, hey-ho! Maybe we can make everybody who won't eat the pork chop ride in a cattle car, no?
ReplyDeleteIt's a dangerous line we're treading, here. :(
I'm not really treading a line, I just really like pork-chops and beer. While we're wasting time on utterly pointless Security Theatre in the name of "Being Seen to be Doing Something", I might as well get lunch out of it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I'm so not being serious. I don't have an answer, because answers are rational things and people who try to blow their ass (literally) up on an airliner full of people are *not* rational - so it seems to me that formulaic detection methods are unlikely to be of any benefit.
*shrugs* In seriousness, I still stand by what I said a decade ago - allow firearm carry, issue frangible rounds as part of the ticket price, and accept that the occasional cock-up is the price of doing business in a free world. Sadly, that's a fine solution for freethinky types, but not a solution for The Masses because they want to Be Protected. So I'm falling back on pointing and laughing to make myself feel better, I guess.
Shying away from dangerous lines (or more probably drawing another :)), I notice in comments at the Butt bomb link mention of the notion of "liquid explosive breast implants detonated by a false pacemaker".
ReplyDeleteOfficial TSA Titty Juggler! Now, there's a .gov job I'd seriously consider. :)
w/v: tropers; could go a couple different ways with this one
"Sadly, that's a fine solution for freethinky types..."
ReplyDelete...who are unfortunately in the minority on Old Terra.
I'm just appalled at the fact that the wannabe martyrs seem to be all too willing to trod a road that will drag the innocents into the flames right at their side.
"I'm just appalled at the fact that the wannabe martyrs seem to be all too willing to trod a road that will drag the innocents into the flames right at their side."
ReplyDeleteBy their lights, the only innocents are the ones who've bent the knee and donned the rags. They don't think anyone else has a right to exist as they wish, even when it doesn't effect their own doctrinal persuits. This is why I find it hard to separate it from mental sickness - because it designates the utterly blameless as viable targets.
Unfortunately, this also leads to things like "Enhanced Airport Security" which does bugger-all but mess with worldwide commerce and travel, reducing revenues in a broad sweep and weakening the already-creaking economies of the First World.
As Kristopher said, such as these are entirely allowed to break the rules if it leads to a successful strike - to reiterate, my beer-and-porkchops comment is a joke.
And goodness knows - we can't fight 'em with Security Checks, we're having a time fighting 'em in the mountains and as for fighting 'em in the univeristies - good luck! But the one thing that the Radical and the Fundamentalist cannot abide and is ultimate vulnerable to is being laughed at.
That really pisses them off. Until I can see a Really Good Way to either spank the Tangoes good and hard or (better) boost the Freethink to Protectorate ratio of the planet, I'm gonna have to settle for laughing at Mr. Flashpants and biting my lip in the security queue.
See, to my mind if I give up international travel, then the Tangoes really have won. And I'm buggered if I'm going to accept that.
Meanwhile, the asshole in chief is on vacation.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know the asshole in chief got a vacation when the shit hits the fan.
I'm just appalled at the fact that the wannabe martyrs seem to be all too willing to trod a road that will drag the innocents into the flames right at their side.
ReplyDeleteBut Tam, that's the amazing thing about the biotech and nanotech revolutions in the coming century - we'll be able to have tailored genocide. Say "Allah Akbar*" while standing too near Semtex one too many times and the nice little buggies swimming in your cranial blood vessels go pop.
... Tell me that's not on DARPA's wishlist.
========
* Or anything else the ones making the buggies don't like people thinking, for that matter.
Sorry but I have no trust in gov ( ours or anyone else's ) being able to define that list of cranial triggers.
ReplyDeleteAny gov.
ReplyDeleteAt all.
Let's see: first Ft. Hood and now a Detroit-bound airliner. Do I see a pattern here of jihadist attacks on U.S. soil or was that only during Booosh's watch? The Chosen One will keep us safe, right?
ReplyDeleteSorry but I have no trust in gov ( ours or anyone else's ) being able to define that list of cranial triggers.
ReplyDelete... precisely where did I say I thought it was going to be a good thing?
Uh, Bruce? Six thousand dead in NYC? No World Trade Centre anymore? Big fucking hole in the Pentagon? United 93?
ReplyDeleteI know some pundit said on Fox News that no terrorist attack happenned on Dubya's watch, but she was sort of lying through her face. Yeah?
Government Cannot Keep You Safe. They'll all tell you they can - they all lie. Simple.
Meanwhile The Guy On Vacation isn't talking, he's out golfing and going to the gym... Some strategery.
ReplyDelete"... he's out golfing and going to the gym... Some strategery."
ReplyDeleteTo the extent some percentage of the electorate even remembers this incident 2.5 years from now, how many of them do you think will reject the claim that Obama was simply demonstrating a display of calm rationality during the incident? Of those that do reject such a tale, how many do you suppose would have been willing to vote for a second Obama term in any case?
Obama gets to enjoy the perks and privilages of his elective office at essentially no cost to his future electoral prospects. Meanwhile, his political opposition continue to take every opportunity to waste their resources attacking an eminently secure target and making a public spectacle of themselves in the process.
Seems to be a pretty sound strategy to me, but what do I know?
Okay. So Achmed Anfopants gets on an airplane, and you want to bash Obama.
ReplyDeleteI think your targetting protocols may be misaligned, chums.
" no terrorist attack happenned on Dubya's watch, but she was sort of lying through her face. Yeah?"
ReplyDeleteNo. Not after 9/11, which was the specific point.
I gotcher genocide, right here:
ReplyDeleteAn Arab guy meets Gene Roddenberry and tells him, "We Arabs LOVE your TV show Star Trek, based on fantastic space adventures set in the future."
Roddenberry thanks him.
Th Arab guy continues, "We Arabs have also noticed that, in the future, it appears that the many races of mankind are at peace, but we have noticed that there are NO arabs in Star Trek. Why is that?"
Roddenberry replies: "That's easy!!! Star Trek is set IN THE FUTURE!"
Mark,
ReplyDelete"Uh, Bruce? Six thousand dead in NYC? No World Trade Centre anymore? Big fucking hole in the Pentagon? United 93?"
The dark blurry thing that whooshed over your head just there? That was The Point.
A major feature of the last electoral match was that the only reason other people hated us was that we had voted for the Wrong Lizard, but if we voted for the Right Lizard, then everyone would love us again and stop hurting us.
The second most important thing in the world to American Baby Boomers is to be right. The most important is to be popular. They just can't imagine that there are people in this world who hate them, not for what they say or what they do or for whom they voted, but because of who they are.
Benjamin Spock's chickens are well and truly coming home to roost.
ReplyDeleteThese idiots are not as smart as the Japanese ... they won't stop after the second nuke hits them.
You make it sound like there is a shortage.
Jim
Jim,
ReplyDeleteWell, we DO have some "day old" nukes, since we stopped testing them. Some well past their freshness date.
Might as well use them first. . .
Tam,
ReplyDeleteI grok The Point. I grok it. I just think that the R Lot did a good job of wrecking America - the America I love - because of what they did. Wiretapping. Torture. That kinda shit. You know? That whole thing we're meant to oppose?
I know, I know - the Dems are doing the same thing. I said "Back Then" that it would take a superhuman to give up those illegal powers - and whilst Obama might be all black and stuff, it turns out he ain't got superpowers.
Who knew?
But at least it broke the mandate to keep just violating civil rights because of intertia. Now, we have to fillibuster first!
Oh, look. A drink.
"I just think that the R Lot did a good job of wrecking America - the America I love - because of what they did. Wiretapping. Torture. That kinda shit. You know? That whole thing we're meant to oppose?"
ReplyDeleteYou mean so well, yet you are spouting the MiniTru version of how it went down and refuse to listen differently.
Why don't you go look at the vote tallies of how, say, the (laughingly-misnamed) P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act or the Iraq invasion vote went down again?
The Ds cheerfully voted for all that stuff in an orgy of bipartisanship and only recalled their "Principled Opposition" come election time, then abandoned it again immediately after.
Hell, maybe I should join you for a drink at the Chestnut Tree; I hear that the Victory Gin there tastes good.