How appropriate that this should have happened at Reagan National Airport, this reminder that Americans are still reflexively, hysterically afraid of Muslims who say anything less reassuring than, "Gosh, I just love America! Golly gee, Americans are swell!"
Officials ordered nine Muslim passengers, including three young children, off an AirTran flight headed to Orlando from Reagan National Airport yesterday afternoon after two other passengers overheard what they thought was a suspicious remark.
Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI.
Kashif Irfan, one of the removed passengers, said the incident began about 1 p.m. after his brother, Atif, and his brother’s wife wondered aloud about the safest place to sit on an airplane.
"My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security," Irfan said. "The only thing my brother said was, ‘Wow, the jets are right next to my window.’ I think they were remarking about safety."
I don’t know who I’m more disgusted with: AirTran, or the fearful twits who were so freaked out by this exchange that they just had to report it to the flight attendants. Look, this was pretty obviously a family group. With three women and three little kids (2, 4, and 7). Since when is suicide bombing a family activity? Or hijacking? Who would seriously try to hijack a plane with toddlers in tow? ("Not now, honey, Mommy’s taking hostages.") And in what conceivable Jihad Family Robinson scenario would suicide bombers or hijackers be speculating (in English, no less) about what the safest part of the plane is?
Yes, AirTran eventually apologized (rather half-assedly), but that does not undo this dispiriting triumph of hysteria over common sense. Apparently at no time did anyone think or say anything like, "Ordinary passengers worry about airplane safety all the time, but why would terrorists? And why would they be worrying about it in English?" They just heard Muslims speculating about the vague possibility of an accident, and immediately went into full-on crazy freakout OMG TERROR mode.
This is the culture of fear that Dubya and the Republicans have created and lovingly nurtured over the last seven-plus years. It’s not going away anytime soon, and the real terrorists couldn’t be happier.
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I know fuckery when I see it. And this is stupid fuckery.
Hey Eli!
Jihad Family Robinson LOL
Hey mary!
707!
You may digg this post right here, firedogs.
And the thing is.. these folks will be on that dreaded secret terrorist Homeland Security list for the rest of their lives.
I think it is really unfair to criticize other passengers for doing their patriotic duty of being terribly, terribly afraid. As for all the Moslems who get bounced from US flights, that isn’t racial profiling. It is just a very interesting coincidence. Now nothing left to see here, just move along, except for you, the guy over there with the dark hair and bushy beard named Omar. We probably will have to ask you to de-blog.
Home of the unbrave, land of the enchained. The sheeple are enough to make you proud aren’t they?
The official party line as embodied by the rightbloggers is that this was exactly what should have happened, it’s better to be safe than sorry, and those stupid Muslims shouldn’t have been talking about bombs or stuff that would upset other passengers.
(Yes, at least one righty blogger – I believe it was the Jammie-Wearing Fool – actually said they were talking about bombs, even though they took pains not to say anything that could be construed by any sane person as even remotely terror or bomb-related.)
heh indeedy.
I suppose all the Scooby Doo Righty-Roo blogs want to give the Alert Passengers Medals of Freedom for identifying their fellow passengers who were flying-while-muslim. Of course, if this family group had taken their seats without speaking, I’m sure they would have been singled out anyway: “Gee, that group is awfully quiet. I wonder what they are up to!”
Howdy y’all. I am now a veteran airplane traveler —– 3 plane rides!
There was one wanker who titled his blog post, “Fly AirTran”.
I’m still baffled by the idea of Muslim terrorists strategizing in English.
Maybe so they would draw less attention to themselves! Just like the little kids were merely props to make them seem less threatening!
Those weren’t children ,they were midget suicide bombers!!
Or perhaps the terrorists have realized that the only way to get high explosives on board is to pack them into child-shaped robots!
Now all children must be subjected to exploratory surgery before being allowed to fly – just a precaution, and nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide.
Drop airplane stocks lower fuel costs are good but hassling passengers its not only arabs and that hurts anyone even foreigners flying into America.
I have two words which could potentially destroy American morale and bring our economy to its knees:
Underwear Bomber.
(He would have to make sure to get caught, of course)
From now on,only people of european descent will be allowed to fly on US airlines!
About 5 years ago, my roly-poly, 50-something sister was detained and questioned for hours, apparently after lawn fertilizer on her shoes tripped an alarm on the bomb sniffing device at the airport in Oklahoma City. A couple things struck me about the incident, such as (1) while they were hassling her, dozens of would-be terrorists with clean feet could have boarded planes and (2) a trained dog can probably tell the difference between lawn fertilizer and an actual bomb a lot better than a million-dollar bomb-sniffing machine at a fraction of the cost.
I think they’re trying to arrange for exactly that on a quasi-voluntary basis.
Better make that Northern European descent, those Mediterranean folks are suspiciously swarthy.
I think that’s kinda illegal. Besides, some of us are European descent and Tejana descent also.
Isn’t AirTran the “new” name of the company whose plane landing in the freezing Potomac a coupla decades ago?
The Mediterranean is kinda close to the middle east!
O K then we’ll require DNA samples to determine race !
I thought it was a new Nike product line targeting the transsexual demographic.
Only Sarah Palin is allowed to do that.
Aloha, New FB friend, Eli! ;-)
I’m sooo pissed… I called to confirm that I’m working up top the mtn tonite, 40 mins prior to departure, I get to the assembly point and it’s cancelled…! 8-(
Good one ratfood!! LMFAO
Bummer!!!
Need to file a grievance, dude.
Child care arrangements, meals, mileage, etc.
Close. It was formerly ValuJet that planted one in the Everglades per wiki
Aloha, CTut! And sorry about that, I swear I had nothing to do with it…
Altho, I wasn’t looking forward to standing outside here during the nite…! ;-)
Something for y’all to look forward to….a sort of different Bill Moyers tonight and really well done. Catch it if you can. A voice of kind, humane, sanity….I am so captivated.
Supposed to get some sort of late cancellation pittance…! We shall see…! ;-)
Looks like a good spot to cool your heels. What’s the elevation?
I’m guessing Bill is the only pundit who aired clips from Duck Soup tonight.
A couple hundred feet shy of 14,000!
Takes my breath away thinking about it, like being almost halfway up Everest.
Looks like what I see when I look out my front window!!
Is Keck an optical telescope?
Maybe we should all fly nekkid.
That would certainly keep the Muslims off the airplanes, right?
If you go to the bottom of the sea floor, Mauna Kea beats Everest by 10,000 ft in total elevation…! ;-)
oooooh CT those are some srsly cool cams … woweeeee!
Except for the particularly hirsute. A good beard can cover a world of sin…
Wait, wait — that makes my head hurt.
WASP AIR! /g
They’d have to start paying the flight attendants more than the pilots.
Although FBI cleared the party to fly, one of the stories quoted AirTran as saying that TSA on the other hand gave them no option to allow the family to do so. So there may be some TSA rule(s) playing havoc here. Heightened watch not reflected in the silly public alert level? Or just plain bad TSA rules (shocking, I know…)?
Any comment that starts with “if you go to the bottom of the sea floor” makes my head hurt.
Heap big mountain. Bet you can almost see the mainland…:-)
Yes and no, It is the largest mirror array on the planet…!
TSA are idiots. They shouldn’t have anything to do with this. If I were Mueller (thank god I’m not, but still….) I’d be in Skeletor’s office right now. The FBI guys should have escorted the family onto the plane and flown to Orlando alongside them for their own protection, deplaning the complainers if they needed to make room.
We need fewer people pointing out Muslims for flying-while-Muslim, not more. This behavior should not be encouraged by the airline, the TSA, the FBI, or RedState.
What if it’s just at the very edge of the ocean, where the floor is only 6 inches deep?
When the wife was interviewed on CNN, she said that the females who made the complaint looked like teenagers.
I was not aware that there is a safe place to sit if a plane is going to blow up? Save us all from wing nuts of all ages.
It makes me want to start turning in random Euro heritage American families for their imagined conversations next time I fly, just to see how it’s handled.
I wouldn’t recommend cliff diving.
There were already two air marshalls on the plane, no need for any extra FBI.
Keck personnel have boasted that if it wasn’t for the Earth’s curvature they could discern between the left and right side headlights of a NYC taxicab…!
You know, almost the entire presentation by the flight attendants before takeoff is about flight safety; should the flight attendants be turned in and, if so, to whom?
Somewhere on the ground, outside the flight path.
that’s what really had me wondering: what kind of superhuman paragons were they that the FBI cleared them totally on the spot? well, not so fast I guess, they weren’t exactly cleared after all, just a cover story to make the controversy go away. I thought once they had their doubts about you, there was no getting cleared anytime soon. seems so.
makes me glad I don’t fly.
These guys sound less and less science-based, quite frankly, since they start their sentences with “If you go to the bottom of the sea floor” and “If it wasn’t for the Earth’s curvature.”
If it wasn’t for my bank balance, I’d be Bernie Madoff.
If Earth was the size of Jupiter, there might be enough gravity to bend the light that much.
Nude flights have occurred, voluntarily.
http://www.trendhunter.com/tre…..siurlaubde
I’ve read statistics about which parts of the plane are safer in accidents etc. Don’t remember where that is.. so It must not be a window seat near the front exit, which is my first choice, aside from business or first class..
Those hard-steel old-timey seat belts make it unlikely I’ll try it.
Have to be a lot more careful locking those snack trays in position if we’re flying nekkid.
Heh heh, well, it’s well known that Keck personnel can be somewhat eccentric.
there are Caucasian children (male) who have been banned from flying because they are on the watch list ….
Musta been Saudi royals, then.
Didn’t Ted Kennedy have a hard time getting off the list? I could never understand that, and of course it was never explained — who was the Ted Kennedy they were trying to prevent from flying? Was it some IRA guy? I mean, you don’t think of Ted Kennedy as a Muslim name, do you?
If you have the same name as someone on the list you’re screwed.
And keep that hot coffeepot away from me too!
Well, you need to be paid for your time. How strong is your union? /s
60 MInutes had an episode of about nine or 12 guys with the same name, on the list, who had to show up about three hours early for every single flight. You’d think they’d put their pictures in the TSA computer under the heading “NOT THESE GUYS” but no…..
yup Teddy had trouble … there are a more than a million names on the list by now and last I recall still not procedure for getting off the list .. and there was a CNN reporter who did a story because he got stopped several times and he found someone who just changed his name to avoid getting stopped by the watch list!!!
When I went running today, I kept meeting these people in heavy coats with hoods pulled over their heads so you couldn’t see their faces very well. Very suspicious. And a lot of them had dogs on leashes. I figure they were trying to throw me off the scent and make me think they were really walking their dogs instead of doing, you know, what they were really doing, like planting bombs in the prairie grass or something.
They’ve dumped all kinds of names into the no-fly database. Very little rhyme or reason. Once you’re there it’s damn near impossible to have your name removed. Sort of a Catch-22, only a would-be terrorist would ask to have their name removed, right?
TNA Airlines?
Thanks, although you’re the first person to call it that…;-)
obviously the fucking watch list is a very blunt instrument. didn’t stop anybody on 9/11 when it was a short list and now there are so many names that of course people with the same/similar names get ’caught’ … but riddle me this … what terrorist would use their real name?
It seems that maybe Muslims are less dangerous to fly with than the air marshals are.
Exposed: Federal Air Marshals are too busy smuggling coke and molesting
kids to protect you.
http://www.alternet.org/story/…..otect_you/
They have some nice bags of salty nuts…
I can’t wait for the interviews by the media of the people who reported this terrorist chatter to explain why exactly it was so terrifying.
i really wonder how long it’s going to take for all this shit to reduce passenger numbers … i have no interest in flying or going anywhere that i would have to fly.
The people I find most suspicious are those who get on their phones immediately upon arrival to arrange transportation from the airport. What kind of code is “Hi, I’ve just landed!” anyway? Of course, the TSA and flight attendants are deaf to my entreaties, since we’ve already landed, but what are these miscreants plotting?
I know what you mean, totally. There are women in the grocery stores here buying a lot of chiles. Chiles are hot…damage…fire…something is going on in southern California, and it involves heat. I hope this is reported soon.
All the security theater appears ideally designed to catch very stupid terrorists. Like flagging people with one-way tickets, because obviously it would never occur to a suicide bomber to buy a return ticket.
well … the air marshals don’t have much to do since the list keeps all the terrorists off the flights!
sounds like it was some young women on a trip maybe being silly that got the family targetted.
Right. Name: Stupid
Dayam, What a kewl vid…! It features all the stomping grounds…! ;-)
28%ers to be sure.
har! Lots of it…judging by that picture..
Oh, wouldn’t that just be too hilarious if it was just a couple of spiteful heathers who wanted to fuck with the brown people. But I’m sure that would never happen.
Didn’t most of the supposed 9/11 hijackers use their actual names, and many were already person of interest? Seems very suspicious.
I’ve heard Osama won’t approve round-trip flight vouchers.
the security theater is not about the terrorists, it’s about us … well, not exactly us, but you know what i mean.
how can you forget about terrorism with all this crap going on at the airport. i swear i would get ptsd just checking in but then, i am the sensitive sort.
you guys are hilarious tonight!
does Osama let them collect air miles?????
Cheap bastard.
Know what the latest thing is at my airport?
If you wear cargo pants, you get a pat-down.
Don’t underestimate the stress of traveling.
bonkers: yup, as I recall they were not hiding at all, but the lists were not so public then … still you’d think professional terrorists would know about that shit.
“These air miles of yours… are they transferable?”
Your lips say, “No,” but your cargo pants say “Yes, yes, yes!”
yeah, Eli, those baggy pants can hide a lot. unbelievable.
I can actually fit an Eee laptop in my cargo shorts. Can’t button ‘em, tho.
yes, yes, yes, yes!!!!
Apparently not as six of the Saudis are still alive. Will look it up for you if you want.
At the time of the 60 minutes segment Teddy mentioned (2 years ago?) some of the 9/11 hijackers were on the no-fly list. Better late than never, right?
They won’t be doing *that* again!
Yes, I’ve read about that. So much of the “official” makes no sense whatsoever.
I always find him kind and sane, so I’m intrigued to find out what’s different! I always record it so I can watch it when I’m less sleepy.
apparently they don’t take anyone off the list, even the 9/11 hijackers (who are dead we think). just one of the minor administrative details that they don’t seem to be able to sort out.
They could add the name of every person, living or dead, without compromising the current efficiency of the list.
SHorter the list, the smaller the next budget?
Only people using made-up names would be able to fly without any hassle!
Some time back, emptywheel reported an interaction with the TSA. IIRC, they went through every business card in her wallet.
what if we all flew under the same madeup name?
and yeah, big list means they are very important and need lots of money to (not) manage the list. sheesh.
they were also copying laptop data: I haven’t heard about that lately, don’t know why they would have cause to stop.
Good idea, if everybody had the same name it would really speed things up. Be easy to remember, too.
F. D. Livingsome?
and we could use the same credit card.
works for me!
More government efficiency in action? Visas are stolen around the world…there is no safety in the no fly list..
Here is the 60 minutes show..I had not seen this before…
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories…..6624.shtml
Airport Security is a money making con job. I think that unscreened baggage handlers are likely the biggest danger to the flying public.
What’s next in airport security? Advertising..
http://www.forbes.com/security…..10tsa.html
TSA employees bypassing security..
EDITED BY MODERATOR
TSA booty up for grabs on E-Bay..
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thebl….._up_fo.htm
~~~ModNote: Please do not link to live searches. Pasting links is just fine, but search results like this are very often problematic for many users. Thanks.~~~
Laptop searches at border might get restricted.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/n…..ches_N.htm
Orwell would understand..
Here they are..the ‘dead’ hijackers.
http://www.the7thfire.com/Poli….._alive.htm
To moderator…
Looking back to figure out what I did..I must have hit copy accidentally on the wrong heading. What I wanted was this…/Bruce Schneier: ‘TSA employees bypassing airport screening’. The wording was similar, so from now on I will be more careful and double check. I did not even know that a person could link to a live search …ouch..I know now.. 1,001 apologies from me..
No problem, no apology necessary. Just minding the store.