Terror in the skies?

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yeah profiling is all well and good until you ARE that arabic dude between 18-40 and you are constantly getting harrassed by people at the airport or walking down the street. Or how about if you're a black guy driving a nice car? Cops will pull them over cause they think they're a drug dealer and have the $$, or cause they stole the car, etc etc. I'm really lucky that i'm a white female and don't have to go through any of that BS and to the people out there who have to go through all the BS you have my sympathies.
 
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I'm really lucky that i'm a white female and don't have to go through any of that BS

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Yeah, so you're just high strung and care way too much about your appearance.
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I think the U.S. airlines need to take a little instruction from El Al Israel, you know, the airline that has never had a hijacking. They don't take crap from anybody!
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If you want the US airline system to completely fall apart, have it act like el Al. You like the TSA's current delays? Be ready for it to double, triple, quarduple.

Before everyone gets all gung ho about their style security, remember, Delta probably does more departures in an hour out of ATL than El Al does all day long throughout the world. That may be an exaggeration, but not by much.

Apples and oranges, my friend.
 
Oh man, lemme tell you about "SWB" ("shopping while black")! Especially when I lived in Orlando it was especially embarassing... GRRRR...
 
I also don't think it was sheer coincidence that a whole team of FAMs was aboard that flight. It wouldn't surprise me at all if flights with more than one or two pax of middle-eastern descent had FAM teams assigned to cover them specifically. And if TSA isn't, it should.

An aside: why the hell are Syrian "musicians" being given entrance visas in the first place?
 
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The terrorists seek to change our way of life. Bombing things is not the only way they can succeed. They also can suceed by scaring us into changing our way of life into something less American. They have succeeded if we abandon our way of life in exchange for supposed security.

Remember the charter of our country is about freedom and liberty first, the government second. It is a great shame that we, as Americans, have forgotten who we are!

Grayson

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Agree about liberty, but these terrorists won't be celebrating just because we give up some civil liberties. They aren't that subtle. They want nothing less than the collapse of western society. They want and pray for our blood running in the streets. And they have access to nukes and biological and chemical weapons. This war is for big stakes.
 
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If you want the US airline system to completely fall apart, have it act like el Al. You like the TSA's current delays? Be ready for it to double, triple, quarduple.

Before everyone gets all gung ho about their style security, remember, Delta probably does more departures in an hour out of ATL than El Al does all day long throughout the world. That may be an exaggeration, but not by much.

Apples and oranges, my friend.

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That is true to some extent. But there were two very important reasons that we didn't consider using El Al type security.
1) We got completely wrapped up in avoiding profiling . We took the position that little old ladies and kids were just as suspect as a young muslim male.
2) We just don't have the expertise that El Al does. They don't get hit because they have real experts screening every passenger on every flight. Even if it's just to look them over as they stand in line. Their people know how to profile and find real threats. Their expertise has been honed by decades of fighting for their existence. We won't be able to match that until we get hit a few more times.
 
The number one reason, though, why we CAN'T implement El Al style security is because it's just not possible form a logistics standpoint. You've got one airline with 100 flights a day versus dozens of them with tens of thousands. You've got a country that probably would fit into one of the big airports here in the United States versus thousands of airports.

It is simply not possible. Period.
 
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yeah profiling is all well and good until you ARE that arabic dude between 18-40 and you are constantly getting harrassed by people at the airport or walking down the street. Or how about if you're a black guy driving a nice car? Cops will pull them over cause they think they're a drug dealer and have the $$, or cause they stole the car, etc etc.

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Realistically, cops pull them over for a violation of some sort (no, not DWB or anything like that), but cops don't "gain" any special powers all-of-a-sudden just because they may have profiled someone, contrary to what community leaders would suggest. Cops still have to have reasonable probable cause to initiate a vehicle search, this doesn't change just because the guy is black or mexican. So cop pulls someone over for a headlight out...that's a perfectly legit reason. Cop, per SOP, checks drivers license/registration, etc and finds no wants/warrants. Cop issues a repair order to driver to have headlight fixed. Nothing illegal in that. Now, having said that, have there been cops that have abused this? Sure there has. Just as there's been airline pilots that have been drunk in the cockpit. But to say cops do this as some sort of standard operating practice that is briefed in the morning brief or is some kind of written procedure, is somewhat absurd....unless you're talking about podunk county sheriff who's judge is his brother. It's about as absurd as saying many airline pilots are drunk in the cockpit, when a few get caught here and there.
 
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....unless you're talking about podunk county sheriff who's judge is his brother.

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Where I live, that's more a reality than a myth...

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"Whatchoo doin roundinhur this late at night, boy??"

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[quote....unless you're talking about podunk county sheriff who's judge is his brother.

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Where I live, that's more a reality than a myth...

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"Whatchoo doin roundinhur this late at night, boy??"

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Like when Doug used to get pulled over in Chino Valley, AZ back before it was a real town.

"What choo doin driving this late at night round these parts? Is that there your TV in the back seat, son?"
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Like when Doug used to get pulled over in Chino Valley, AZ back before it was a real town.

"What choo doin driving this late at night round these parts? Is that there your TV in the back seat, son?"
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...it's a real town?
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The number one reason, though, why we CAN'T implement El Al style security is because it's just not possible form a logistics standpoint. You've got one airline with 100 flights a day versus dozens of them with tens of thousands. You've got a country that probably would fit into one of the big airports here in the United States versus thousands of airports.

It is simply not possible. Period.

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No one said exactly modeling El Al Airlines, rather, we need to learn from them. We need to profile, we need to arm pilots, and we need more FAMs (although, I can't really say that I know how many FAMs we have now).
 
Now this may sound stupid, but have they ever tought about arming FAs?
 
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Now this may sound stupid, but have they ever tought about arming FAs?

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I believe that a group of FA'a raised quite a stir about a year ago, demanding that they recieve defense training like the pilots....Makes sense to me.
 
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Now this may sound stupid, but have they ever tought about arming FAs?

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LOL.....

"......mister, you slap me on the butt as I'm walking down th aisle ONE more gawddamn time and I'm gonna kill your ass......."

No one would screw with FAs ever, ever again..
 
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Agree about liberty, but these terrorists won't be celebrating just because we give up some civil liberties. They aren't that subtle. They want nothing less than the collapse of western society. They want and pray for our blood running in the streets. And they have access to nukes and biological and chemical weapons. This war is for big stakes.

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Do they have access to nukes, biological and chemical weapons? I think that is a highly questionable assumption. I have no doubt that they would use them should they acquire them, but I doubt they have WMD now.

Big stakes? What could be higher stakes than the USA losing the very principles it was founded upon? Would we still be "American?" Would that not be a collapse of Western Society?

I am much more afraid of politicians using the fear of the population to take away our liberties, and take control of our country in a way that is purely un-American, than a terrorist with a car bomb. Study your history. How do you think Hitler came to power? Roses and parades, or propaganda and fear. He made his populace believe the world was out to destroy the German way of life, and made them believe that the Jews were at the heart of it. The Germans were then willing to wage war on the world out of fear, and out of Patriotism.

Now, a couple of quotes...

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. ~George Jean Nathan

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. ~George Bernard Shaw

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. ~Albert Einstein, The World As I See It, 1934

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. ~Bertrand Russell

I know that my position is largely unpopular, but that doesn't mean it is incorrect.

Grayson
 
Yeah, that's all good stuff. I agree with you that liberty is worth taking risks for.

But this is not a straw man situation. The fanatical muslims do want to absolutely destroy us, and they are very well funded. There are by most estimates I've seen about 20 nuclear suticases unaccounted for from the former soviet union. These produce Hiroshima type exposions. I've read assessments from some experts that al Queda certainly has a few of them. They are a very patient bunch, oftern taking years to plan and carry out an attack. Supposedly it's part of their faith to be slow and deliberate.

I hope it doesn't happen. Just one of those in the financial district and our discussions about airline survival would be trivia.

Muslims are involved in about 90% of all the armed conflicts in the world right now. In Sudan Arab Muslims are committing genocide against balck Muslims. We have got to get over this peaceful Islam stuff until they decide to try a more peaceful approach.
 
I think we basically agree. By no means am I suggesting that we are not in danger from outside sources. There must be a way that we can defend ourselves without losing ourselves in the process. I think if we, as a nation, took a more introspective look at our foreign policy, at least some of the terrorism danger would subside. At the very least, we would gain more international support for the actions we take to defend ourselves.

Unfortunately, this is an almost entirely academic discussion. But ain't it fun?

Regards,

Grayson
 
Yes it's fun. The problem with getting international "support" for defending ourselves is that many of our supposed allies would relish our descent from a world power. Some are overtly hostile, others covertly and almost all use the United Nations as a weapon against us.

Not to beat the French to death (although I'k like to) but they no longer need us to stand guard and protect them from the Soviet Union and they are having a ball sticking it to us at the UN. I don't know how you parlay with that. Even an internationalist like Kerry has recently made strong statements about the right of the US to unilateral action in it's own defense.

We will likely get tested again in the future as to our standing as the lone world super power who fights for freedom for ourselves and others. We can't cede any authority to non-powers like France who are hostile to both the idea of freedom and the standing of the US as a super power.
 
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