What price political correctness?

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unless you're on an overnight flight, that doesn't leave you much to do on the plane, and trust me, and eight hour flight is just a touch boring without some music

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I rarely listen to music on a plane.I read.

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Besides, isn't it possible that this 'Foiled plot' is merely a nice little publicity stunt for Mr Blair? He's not been too poular lately.. this could be just what he needs, and just the excuse to push through national identity cards.

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Mid-term elections are also coming very soon here in the states, and the Republicans are in some very close races.I really can't ignore the incredibly fortuitous timing of this event.Fear worked for Bush in the last election.

I sincerely hope the evidence for this plot becomes available to the public quickly.And by evidence, I mean the explosives, detonators, statements of intent, etc.Not the "he had an airplane poster on his bedroom wall", kind of evidence.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the pigeon and some days you'll be the statue."

Looks like a little more than an alleged plot.

Well to be fair it does to me and it did yesterday - however hard experience has taught me that nothing is quite what it seems.The ricin plot was pretty much the same in terms of it's reporting and the evidence presented to the public - well until the point when they let them all go.So you'll forgive me for mentally pegging this as "alleged" until we see a trial.

CaveDiver, now that at least one of the suspects has been revealed to be white - do you still think we should be using profiling?

Is that what the kids are calling it nowadays?

I dunno about the other kids, but I overheard my grandkids calling what I think you mean "screwing." I actually meant literally storming the cabin (I know you know this).Recently I attended a play (Black Dahlia) which included a scene where a nude male actor ran across the stage and simulated sex with an actress. There was something remarkably funny about a flaccid, flopping penis in that fictional scene of passion--that's the absurdity I envisioned about naked men storming the pilot's cabin.Probably their butts would look funny, too. I suspect people would be less aggressive under conditions of communal nudity--too vulnerable, too silly looking.I was very amused that the grandkids were appalled to see I was listening. I put on a stern face and said nothing.If they only knew what stories gramps could tell...

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One of the suspects "Abdul Waheed" was formerly known as Don Stewart-Whyte.

Here's the problem: You don't increase security after a significant threat was established after-the-fact. When 9/11 occured, I was in the military at that time, working as a military police. We went from low drag to high speed in 5 minutes after the fact. All of a sudden, we checked every single vehicle that passed through our gates, whether they were a civilian or a two-star Admiral. This frantic inspection continued for a week straight and then slowly subsided into a lackadaisical apathy (or at least when compared to the preceding days after 9/11). The point is, if you're gonna be high-speed and tactical, then do it all the time, not when the enemy is the most unlikely to attack. They are most likely to attack when we least expect. I mean, that is so cardinal that I actually trivialize it by mentioning it. The point I'm trying to make here, there is always a credible threat in the UK/US/Canada/Israel/Australia or any nation that embraces some sort of "due process." The 'good ole days' we grew up with are over. That's just the reality of it. And the problems of the Middle East have been thrust upon the Western world. That's just the way it is. Knowing this, its too late to go back to the way we were. As far as Heathrow and pretty much all Western airports being on high security, it will subside again, and all your toiletries will be back on the plane.[still in the process of moving and only just got limited net connectivity installed, so apologies to all those I owe replies to from the past couple of weeks. will be back to normal in next couple of days]

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“If chance be the father of all flesh then disaster is his rainbow in the sky. And when you hear of, state of emergencies, sniper kills ten, youths go looting, bomb blasts school, it is but the sound of man worshipping his maker” -Steve Turner

Should we profile is a great questoin. El al (Israel's airline for those in Rio Linda) has been profiling for 30 years with great success. They've had zero attacks. That being said, if you profile for a certain group of people, the badguys will simply attempt to beat the profile. Enter female with 6 month old baby. Who would think a mother a with a 6 month old would blow herself and her baby up? Alas, Al Qaeda has been trying to recruit asians and caucasians for this very purpose. What I Don't agree with is when security officials let 3 arab men go by and then give white grandma a rectal exam because she was random #X.On a side note, does anyone know how the Iranian military cleared mine fields during the Iran/Iraq war? Families would send their kids to the Irainian engineers with little gold keys tied around their necks. These kids would then run across a minefield and blow up. The key is supposed to be the key to paradise.But what does a 6 month old baby do with 72 virgins?But, that is the culture we are dealing with.

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People don't kill people
Cartoons kill people

I agree - if the purpose of the inspections is to stop terrorist attacks.But what if the whole purpose of the inspection is to instill fear into the population, so that they are more likely to vote for the incumbents in the next election?

I have a problem with profiling. Unless we assume that Muslims are moderate as anyone else until proven otherwise we will marginalize them them and make extremism more attractive to them.I do believe that we have to start from the premise the we are all created equal. I don't believe that doing the wrong thing will bring the right response. Once we give up our principles we have lost as we have nothing of value left to protect.It is also my opinion that the terrorists would like nothing better than for us to start discriminating against western Muslims. Nothing would be more helpful to their recruitment drive.In the end our best weapon against Islamic terrorism is the moderate Muslim. Both this latest case and the case in Canada had happy endings largely because of assistance from moderate Muslims.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Or if the purpose is to snoop out and keep track of those who might diagree with government policy? Or at least to put a chill in the activiites of such people?

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"These monkeys are at once the ugliest and the most beautiful creatures on the planet./ And the monkeys don't want to be monkeys; they want to be something else./ But they're not."
-- Ernie Cline

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Here's the problem: You don't increase security after a significant threat was established after-the-fact.

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Yeah, it's too bad that the Bush White House took so much focus off of Bin Laden in specific and terrorism in general once they got into office.Edited by schrafinator, : No reason given.