Thank you for flying Knee-Jerk Airlines, where the illusion of safety is always our top priority.
Remember back when authorities in Great Britain foiled a plot to detonate liquid explosives on-board ten airliners bound for the U.S. and Canada? Whether you know the specific details of the 2006 arrests or the terrorist plans, you're damn sure familiar with the fallout from that threat: Since then you've been forced by the TSA to adhere to a set of byzantine, seemingly arbitrary restrictions on what liquids you can and can't stow in carry-on luggage -- how many ounces are acceptable and in what kind of clear plastic bag they have to be contained -- each time you fly. While those restrictions have relaxed somewhat over the past couple of years -- often dependent on how generous the particular security juggernaut you face at the airport is feeling on the day you happen to be flying -- they're still very much in place. The last time I flew from Miami to New York City, the humorless TSA employee manning the scanner took a tube of Crest toothpaste from my bag and held it up in front of me as if to signal to me that I should've known better than to try to get it past him. I wanted to grab it out of his hand and squeeze the whole damn thing into my mouth, but thought the better of it.
Well, if you felt like that reaction was ridiculously overcompensatory and likely did almost nothing to make you safer in the skies other than maybe forcing you to rethink flying altogether, get ready -- crap's about to get a whole lot worse. In response to Friday's arrest of a Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a Delta/Northwest flight as it landed in Detroit, transportation officials and Homeland Security are announcing new restrictions on passenger behavior while flying. New rules will forbid airline passengers from getting up from their seats, accessing their carry-on luggage or having personal belongings on their laps during the final hour of flight before landing.
Will this make anyone safer? Probably not -- but that's not really the point.
What makes these new restrictions so laughably outrageous is this: They're a reaction to a suddenly perceived threat that's technically been there all along. Like the liquid ban -- and the shoes-off policy that's been a staple of airport security checks since the Richard Reid incident back in 2001 -- this is a case of America's ostensibly sharpest minds in the realm of national security responding to a situation rather than planning for it in advance and thereby heading it off at the pass. Did we never realize that it was possible for terrorists to bring liquid explosives onto planes? If so, then why the hell were liquids of a certain volume ever allowed onto flights; if not, then for God's sake why not? Likewise, did no one ever consider the possibility that someone could blow up a plane as it prepared to land? And isn't a threat while landing completely arbitrary anyway -- and our reaction to it, to restrict the movement of passengers during landing, just as arbitrary?
The only way to truly keep us truly safe while flying a commercial airliner would be to put us all through body scanners then have us fly in our underwear, forcing every passenger to check his or her bags and carry nothing on. And even then, I'd bet my life -- literally, because there's no other option -- that those who want to kill us would just find some other way to accomplish their goals.
And then the forward-thinkers at the TSA would simply wind up having to impose a knee-jerk crackdown on something else as a response to that "new threat." If and when that happens, the newer, harsher security measures will be exactly what they are now: a floor show and little more.
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There are real terrorists out there so making a comic joke out of this fiasco is making a joke out of reality.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/12/keystone-complex-to-rescue.html
Meantime, it's absurd to think that keeping passengers out of the loo or from having personal belongings on their laps would do anything but aggravate what's already a miserable flying experience. If grandma can't bring her knitting on a 12 hour flight, or use a restroom when she needs to, then the terrorist have already won.
The most ironic idiocy of the new "no passengers out of their seats" restriction is that the man who attempted to blow up this plane was seated securely at the time - and it was a passenger who was OUT of his seat that tackled him, wrestled the device away, and tried to put out the fire. Guess if these regulations had been in place before the fact, the hero of flight 253 would have been fined and/or jailed the moment the plane touched down.
Sheesh!
The fact is this, kids: there IS NO WAY to be completely secure from individuals for whom even death is not a deterrent (and is quite often an integral part of the plan). Of course we need reasonable security measures for air travel - and 9/11 led to several long-overdue steps that have made flying safer - but what we need most in this nation is to "man up," and stop imagining that ANYTHING can be made 100 percent guaranteed secure.
That seems to be the "great lie" that we've been conditioned to expect. It's turned us into a trembling-at-our-own-shadow, ready-to-sue-at-the-drop-of-a-hat populace that demands ironclad perfection from everything around us. Sorry, gang - life just ain't that way.
I'd end up getting arrested, cause I'd just whip it out and go....
Federal Air Marshals are not members of SEIU. Those who are union members belong to the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.
SEIU members are the people who clean up after you in hotels, hospitals and office buildings, and who work long hours for low wages and often no health benefits, only to be called "indigent" by those fortunate enough to have health care. You should try thanking SEIU members instead of verbally abusing them.
Federal air marshalls blend in quite well and look like many other travelers. I have a friend who has been a federal air marshall for 8 years, and to look at him you wouldn't find anything that indicates he is one. He dresses variously as a businessman or a tourist, and looks much like any other average lone male traveler. The only real difference is that he carries a concealed loaded pistol and has federal law enforcement credentials in his wallet, and doesn't nap on any flight. More air marshalls WOULD be a good idea, they are a non-intrusive security force that inconvenience no one and throw an x factor into security measures that potential hijackers or saboteurs can't account for.
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/commenter_says_he_was_aboard_n.html
An Indian man in a nicely dressed suit around age 50 approached the check in counter with the terrorist and said "This man needs to get on this flight and he has no passport." The two of them were an odd pair as the terrorist is a short, black man that looked like he was very poor and looks around age 17(Although I think he is 23 he doesn't look it). It did not cross my mind that they were terrorists, only that the two looked weird together. The ticket taker said "you can't board without a passport". The Indian man then replied, "He is from Sudan, we do this all the time". I can only take from this to mean that it is difficult to get passports from Sudan and this was some sort of sympathy ploy. The ticket taker then said "You will have to talk to my manager", and sent the two down a hallway. I never saw the Indian man again as he wasn't on the flight. It was also weird that the terrorist never said a word in this exchange. Anyway, somehow, the terrorist still made it onto the plane. I am not sure if it was a bribe or just sympathy from the security manager.
I propose the government should begin profiling these wannabe terrorists. Step 1 would be to register all left wing leaning citizens in the US.
Aren't they usually more of the tree hugging kind, pacifism and for universal health care and such?
Correct me if I'm wrong but don't you mean the people to the right such as the Oklahoma bomber, Nazi groups, Fascists etc? That would be the far right wing side, right?
And really, if we were all required to fly naked, they'd just have to implement body cavity searches. ;o)
Just like the old cars with an inch thick metal, the 40 year old aircraft will probably fly for another 40 if maintained.
There are still lot of WWII airplanes flying out there.
Even though the estimated life span of those airplanes were 5 years, they are still flying - some 65 years later.
If our cars were maintained in the same way an airplane is maintained you would be driving your great grandmas pickup from 1943 with no problems. The demand for new cars wouldn't exist so number of cars manufactures each year would probably be on the same level as airplanes are today. GM would have been out of business way before the oil crisis back in the 70's. :P
Zero casualities. Captured terrorist. Everything recorded as evidence for trial.
Apparently, sneaking bomb components on an airline is prone to failure.
Eventually we'll have to fly in stasis coffins like some sort of aerial Amistad.