prole Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 WTF? So we get to face stricter security and surveillance measures in gates and on airplanes because the cretins they hired to do these jobs can't even apply the measures that already exist? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvashtarkatena Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 I'll be interested to see what happens when a flight crew encounters their first case of explosive diarrhea during the final 'sit down and STFU' hour of a flight. Â Good luck with that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvashtarkatena Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 And, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the passengers, you know, have to get up out their seats to subdue Mr. Hello I'm From Nigeria? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvashtarkatena Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 Airline Security: No parody required. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prole Posted December 28, 2009 Author Share Posted December 28, 2009 I'll be interested to see what happens when a flight crew encounters their first case of explosive diarrhea during the final 'sit down and STFU' hour of a flight. Â Good luck with that. Â I'm going to organize a shit-in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 I've logged about 20 flights this year, mostly for work. I noticed early this year that the TSA crowd was ignoring the little bottle of shampoo, toothpaste, and shaving cream I had in a baggie in my carry-on. I left it in by mistake but just kept in on trips after that because they didn't ever say anything. I assumed that they had a directive to just ignore these things - seems odd. But it was very consistent through SeaTac, Spokane, Portland, Boise, Anchorage, and Newark - no comment on my contraband. Â I generally think that the Thousands Standing Around crew is for show and that a determined wacko will pull off something at some point. They only have to get lucky once. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil K Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 WTF? So we get to face stricter security and surveillance measures in gates and on airplanes because the cretins they hired to do these jobs can't even apply the measures that already exist? Â Ummmmm.... can we consider the facts for just a second before the rants? Consider where this latest failed attempt originated from: Amsterdam. So TSA workers are to blame? Please explain. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prole Posted December 28, 2009 Author Share Posted December 28, 2009 (edited) The place is a junk show. I often fly standby. I get a "seat request card" not a boarding pass. The worker at the security gate checking passes against IDs was thoroughly confused by this. "Hey, you don't have a boarding pass". She was about 5 feet tall, did not have a mastery of English, and was harried and distracted. I didn't even finish my sentence explaining what the document was before she impatiently waved me through. It could've been a bus ticket for all she knew. The other TSA workers in the checkpoint were laughing it up amongst themselves, playing grabass, or watching while a wizened 90 year old Indian woman was being frisked. It's a joke. Edited December 28, 2009 by prole Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prole Posted December 28, 2009 Author Share Posted December 28, 2009 It's my personal policy to leave bitching about the Dutch to the Dutch. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JosephH Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 This guy's parents notified the US embassy he was going off the deep end and no one pulled his visa. The info was then sent to HS and no one there bothered to pull his visa or even put him on the no-fly list. Very similar to the back-end, inter-agency incompetence seen in the Ft. Hood shooter case (and in 9/11 for that matter). In both instances there was plenty of heads up, but no one bothered to follow it up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alpinfox Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 In both instances there was plenty of heads up, but no one bothered to follow it up. Â Hindsight is great. Â I wonder how many emails, phone calls, letters Homeland Security/FBI/CIA/US embassies get per day saying, "I/someone I know/this guy on a streetcorner, etc am going to blow up a plane/kill the president/release sarin gas in the mall, etc" Â Â Â Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvashtarkatena Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 I know that when I have a fundamental problem, I bury it with an enormous expensive bureaucracy stamped with a NAZI moniker. Doesn't everyone? Â Does anyone take our federal government seriously anymore? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JosephH Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 In both instances there was plenty of heads up, but no one bothered to follow it up. Hindsight is great. Â I wonder how many emails, phone calls, letters Homeland Security/FBI/CIA/US embassies get per day saying, "I/someone I know/this guy on a streetcorner, etc am going to blow up a plane/kill the president/release sarin gas in the mall, etc" Bullshit. We had well-sourced, substantiated, and actionable info in 9/11, Ft. Hood, and this case. His father is a high-placed banker within Nigeria, not some random nut job. It's not at all a matter of hindsight - it's the same pattern of dropping the ball between field offices and Washington, between unconnected security systems, between individuals who lack the authority or interest to connect-the-dots. Â From an Israeli perspective its incompetence plain an simple. From a systems perspective it's a matter of the inability of complex human-machine workflows to provide the necessary coverage. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvashtarkatena Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 In both instances there was plenty of heads up, but no one bothered to follow it up. Â Hindsight is great. Â I wonder how many emails, phone calls, letters Homeland Security/FBI/CIA/US embassies get per day saying, "I/someone I know/this guy on a streetcorner, etc am going to blow up a plane/kill the president/release sarin gas in the mall, etc" Â Â Â Â HS has greatly exacerbated this 'crisis of abundance' by absorbing everybody down the the local dog catcher. One example is Suspicious Activity Reporting, the latest fad being both pushed from the top down by HS and bottom up by local yocals who've watched one too many Bruce Willis flicks. LAPD list of Suspicious Activities to watch for include photography and note taking. Good luck with all that 'useful intel' guys! Â Hermetically sealing a country of 350 million is a costly fantasy. Â We've been bullies for a while, but after 911 we decided to become the world's biggest asshole, so now we've got to watch our back to the tune of a trillion or more dollars a year we can no longer a afford. In the process, we're burning down our basic, middle class values and lifestyle in exchange for the appearance of security. Yeah, I'd say we have a national security problem, but it has nothing to do with little brown guys in caves. It's an internal problem. Â We have a political party in this country that has, for decades, openly advocated destroying every single system, from education to health care, that provides real security for our middle class. Â If we really want to take out some Bad Guys and eliminate the greatest threat to true national security this country has ever seen, the RNC would be a great first stop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvashtarkatena Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 In both instances there was plenty of heads up, but no one bothered to follow it up. Hindsight is great. Â I wonder how many emails, phone calls, letters Homeland Security/FBI/CIA/US embassies get per day saying, "I/someone I know/this guy on a streetcorner, etc am going to blow up a plane/kill the president/release sarin gas in the mall, etc" Â Â Bullshit. We had well-sourced, substantiated, and actionable info in 9/11, Ft. Hood, and this case. His father is a high-placed banker within Nigeria, not some random nut job. It's not at all a matter of hindsight - it's the same pattern of dropping the ball between field offices and Washington, between unconnected security systems, between individuals who lack the authority or interest to connect-the-dots. Â From an Israeli perspective its incompetence plain an simple. From a systems perspective it's a matter of the inability of complex human-machine workflows to provide the necessary coverage. Â Most credible analyses of 911 would agree here. The Bush administration had direct, specific warnings about Al Qaeda and basically took a do nothing approach. Bush himself was doing a whole lot of brush cutting prior to 911, as I recall. Â Regarding 911, it's true that several of the hijackers were under close FBI surveillance, but the dysfunction and lack of prioritized focus in that agency prevented it from acting. Rather than addressing the specific inadequacies in each security agency, an overall of our post 911 security apparatus produced the WMD debacle, a vastly bloated and unwieldy bureaucracy, a deep attack on our civil liberties and a host of human rights atrocities. Good response. Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Off_White Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 The entire Homeland Security boondoggle is a clear indication that Al Queda flat out destroyed us with the destruction of the world trade center. Maximum impact for minimum effort. The total costs associated with the bullshit "war on terror", from the stupid Iraq war to the lost productivity from HS's attempts to close the barn door after Elvis has left the building, makes the physical cost of the actual buildings and lives seem like peanuts. Financially, its probably the greatest military victory in the history of the human race. Even a failed attempt like the recent pants bomber wanker succeeds in causing real financial damage beyond the perpetrator's wildest dreams. Â Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvashtarkatena Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 We would have been far, far better off to simply say 'fuck you, we're going to continue to be a free and open nation' and take a few more hits, rather than becoming a paranoid, bankrupt police state full of paranoid pussies manipulated by cynical asset strippers and chest puffing posers. We would also have done better to not over simplify and dehumanize 'The Bad Guys' , and take a look at a pretty rotten foreign policy track record. Â Such philosophies are simply not in an asset stripper's playbook, however. The Right Wing is a movement based on cruelty and bullying, so it's only natural that their response was to outdo the atrocities of the enemy, rather than take the high ground, as any principled society should always do, but most importantly during times of threat and crisis. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prole Posted December 28, 2009 Author Share Posted December 28, 2009 Y'all ready for Yemen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prole Posted December 28, 2009 Author Share Posted December 28, 2009 I'm bullish on Yemen. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Choada_Boy Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 Why wasn't this guy already dead in a Predator drone missile strike? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rbw1966 Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 And yet I am hauled out and spend some quality time with the INS every time I re-enter the good old US of A because I happen to have the same name as a fugitive who has been on the run for 10 years. Â Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tvashtarkatena Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 (edited) Why wasn't this guy already dead in a Predator drone missile strike? Â That's the vision: Dome the entire country, and take out the Bad Guys with a push of a button...inside or outside The Dome. No muss, no fuss. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Â You gotta love the term Homeland Security, too. What a wholesome mix of Der Faderland, Mom's apple pie, paranoid xenophobia, New Speak, and the comfort of a soft, fuzzy widdle blankie; perfect for that half of our population with the mentality of a spoiled 6 year old. I wonder how much the Bush Administration paid that lucky PR firm to come up with it? Edited December 28, 2009 by tvashtarkatena Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 You guys are depressing me again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
prole Posted December 28, 2009 Author Share Posted December 28, 2009 Stocks are up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Choada_Boy Posted December 28, 2009 Share Posted December 28, 2009 How about an RDX filament, coated in nylon, woven into fabrics, worn as clothing, and initiated by an iPhone. Do they have an app for that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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