At a guess

Post #110,965 by hnick 7/22/03 6:15:14 PM Reply	At a guess I would suspect that he is kinda sorta pissed about additional delays, annoyances, and general pains in the collective ass of all the fliers who have to put up with idiocy in the name of security. The guy's egoboo cost 300 people the time to turn around and put the shithead off the plane. None of us knows what the requirements for flight personel were for such things. The guy could have removed his pin, having made his point to all the people who have no power to change policy, or kept it with the same result. Any possible value of his statement was wasted. The movers and shakers could not care less. The staff will continue to do what is on the checklist. 300 people are late elsewhere and probably would like to see his testicles braised while still attached. The stupidity of 'security' has to be moderated. It is totaly out of hand. My wife is traveling, and yesterday the idiots opened her check-through flight bag and the makeup kit inside to conficate cuticle scissors. The guy's heart may be in the right place, but IMO his head is up his ass.
Post #110,967 by Ashton 7/22/03 6:34:11 PM Reply	Well, Hugh - that is indeed the pragmatic approach. It's the decent, the honourable, the Murican Thing to do. And if everyone behaves that way and with those priorities, indefinitely.. why - [already said too variously and too often to take YAN stab] Let's (not-)vote for perfect efficiency in all things - homogenized beats Pasteurized. One Size of conformity Fits All. Don't Rock the Boat. Gestures are Futile. It's All Been Decided and There's Nothing You Can Do. ..in 3/4 time with syncopation. {No arpeggios allowed} Ashton
Post #111,148 by hnick 7/23/03 1:23:28 PM Reply	Seems sort of boolean to come from you Fight every for any and every cause fearlessly and ferociously until success or death, or become one of the sheep? What? No sense of proportion? No picking of battles, people, or places? As others have pointed out, this appears to be primarily one person\ufffds egocentric crusade. The end result, travel without government tyranny, is admirable. The means are questionable. Suing in court seems reasonable, more so if it works. Irritating the drones is pointless, unless the intent is to get molested, providing more grist for the court, in which case few want to sit next to a doof with a martyrdom complex. If the point is to air his opinion, he could have taken the badge off, having made his point. It seems to me that enough of the populace supports the stupidity of this ineffectual \ufffdsecurity\ufffd to make it difficult to get rid of it anytime soon. Check Nightowl\ufffds views on the subject. She is probably not unique. Most of the population has not yet figured out that the chances of being killed on the highway getting to the airport are much greater than the chances of being killed in the air, either by terrorists or accident. So I submit that it is better to pick the time, place, and targets that make sense. To be sure, it may be more personally satisfying to get a plane turned around. Hell, blow a couple planes up in protest; that\ufffdll really get you talked about. It won\ufffdt, however, do the cause any good. Letters to the editor can change minds over time. Likewise letters to beltway denizens. Figure out who is the worst offenders and organize boycotts. The downside is that it will take time and people. If the vast majority want stupid security measures, badges and personal protest are not going to be effective. It may be counterproductive. Of the 300 people on that plane, probably ~300 think the doof with the badge is a total asshole. Had he been a little more politic, a fraction of those might have considered point of the badge and been a little more receptive to the next overture elsewhere. Just my .02 Hugh _{who no longer feels you have to use a brick all the time}
Post #111,167 by Ashton 7/23/03 5:11:22 PM Reply	OW!___rilly know how to Hurt a Guy :( Boolean non-thought.. Moi? Ummm mea culpa, but only a tad. On further reflection on this guy's personality and the perspective you are raising: I have to mostly agree about the "choosing your venue". I don't buy the "self-promotion of some cockamamie article featuring The Pin and The Guy" as a straw-man to impugn his character. Hey, call him a Promoter and it's == SOB. Cheap Rush-type quip. I suspect (too) that he may well be the sort of Me-Me-Me narcissist who will countenance no rebuttal to WTF he deems Important. Accent on the suspect... But re your 300/300 I might imagine 275/300 - for tarring & feathering him: The 25 (I can write my own stats too) may well be as fed up with the juvenile antics of petty 'guard' satraps as is Mr. Pin, but lack the guts to either do or say anything, ever. Of the 275 though: how many are Pissed 100% for the simple (identical-Me-Me-Me) reason: I Am Being Inconvenienced! [This should Never happen To Me!] Hindsight then.. yes, had he (even ceremoniously) simply removed The Pin and sat down - the 25 might have been heartened towards some similar consequence-free display in future. The Pin does indeed go to the core of the matter - We ARE all "assumed to be Terrorists til we sorta PROVE we aren't" ..by exhibiting docility in the face of massive encroachment upon ordinary Citizen Rights - by purely ceremonial confiscation of trivial things, as would be laughable in any piece of fiction. So I conclude that he was 'RIGHT' -- right up-to some debatable point where an honorable cave would demonstrate a modicum of perspective, that er so-rare "scale and relativity" Thing. 20/20, as always. I hope his suit is semi-effective. Today I guess that means -- garners a bit of yes! Publicity, so as to awaken a few more of the snoozing consumers of Airline & Admin Arrogance.. the ones who pay for this 'service'. That's the best I can culpa on this one ;-) Ashton
Post #110,984 by deSitter 7/22/03 7:59:04 PM 7/22/03 8:00:38 PM Reply	Re: At a guess It's like those Greenpeace idiots who put people in real danger to make a point. A worthwhile point can be made other ways. When the first Gulf War broke out, I wore a little pin on my cabbie hat with the symbol for Pluto painted on it. No one knew what the hell it meant but it didn't scare anyone. People who look Semitic should just get used to being super-scrutinized in the air. They asked for it. -drl Edited by deSitter July 22, 2003, 08:00:38 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #111,101 by mmoffitt 7/23/03 9:48:50 AM Reply	Please tell me that's just flame bait. [Emphasis Mine] People who look Semitic should just get used to being super-scrutinized in the air. They asked for it. You can't be serious. You're trolling, right? bcnu, Mikem The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice and always has been...We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism. - Mark Twain, "Monarchical and Republican Patriotism"
Post #111,103 by deSitter 7/23/03 9:55:43 AM Reply	Re: Please tell me that's just flame bait. No, why should I troll? The people who are the most dangerous are from a very specific part of the world with very specific ethnography. This is helpful in identifying people who might wish to crash airliners into tall buildings, and should be used, the way a bird knows on sight not to eat certain kinds of nasty tasting bugs. I don't see the point in depriving ourselves of the use of sight in defending ourselves. -drl
Post #111,113 by inthane-chan 7/23/03 10:32:46 AM Reply	Huh, didn't know that Timothy McVeigh looked Semitic...
Post #111,114 by deSitter 7/23/03 10:37:09 AM Reply	He doesn't! Because he's not! Wow! But, if we need to profile Bubba, we'll profile Bubba. Sorry, TFPC doesn't help here. -drl
Post #111,115 by inthane-chan 7/23/03 10:38:55 AM Reply	Well, that's the problem. Count all the bombs set off in the U.S. by Bubba, and then count all the bombs set off in the U.S. by Al Habib. I'm pretty certain Bubba outnumbers Al Habib by a bit. Let's round up all the rednecks and ship them to camp X-Ray! Woo! And though you hold the keys to ruin of everything I see/With every prison blown to dust, my enemies walk free/Though all the kingdoms turn to sand and fall into the sea/ I'm mad about you I'm mad about you
Post #111,119 by deSitter 7/23/03 10:50:10 AM Reply	Re: Well, that's the problem. When the country is so fscked that the anonymous Bubba presents a real issue, then why worry? It's done for. But, if I can readily and certainly identify someone who might be a danger by his citizenship and ethnic group, why should I not use the information? Anyone who is a citizen of Saudi Arabia and who wants to board a US jetliner should be all but turned inside out before hand. I'd even restrict their flight options to a few routes at specific times. I'd make no attempt to accomodate them or make them feel good. The message should be - you're from a place that we just can't trust - live with it or go home and make it trustworthy. "To all our Semitic customers: We're sorry for the inconvenience - why not go home, clean up your millenium-old disputes, act like civilized adults, and then we can dispense with this unpleasantness? Whaddya say?" (def Semites: A member of a group of Semitic-speaking peoples of the Near East and northern Africa, including the Arabs, Arameans, Babylonians, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, Hebrews, and Phoenicians.) -drl
Post #111,195 by deSitter 7/23/03 9:16:53 PM Reply	Re: Well, that's the problem. I should also point out my STRENUOUS OBJECTION to any form of computer scanning of people. This should remain a common sense decision based on intuitive factors and basic sane assumptions about who would be up to no good. I think I'd let dogs pick out the bad guys at the gate. I'm not so much interested in who is doing what, as I am in seeing that Justice and Common Sense go hand in hand. One of my assumptions is that a just country is a secure country, because it need not be embarrased by its ideals. -drl
Post #111,118 by Nightowl 7/23/03 10:50:03 AM Reply	Re: Huh, didn't know that Timothy McVeigh looked Semitic... Thanks, my thoughts exactly. :) Nightowl >8# "I learned to be the door, instead of the mat!" Comment by Nightowl
Post #111,117 by mmoffitt 7/23/03 10:50:00 AM Reply	They asked for it? How? by being the wrong color? All of them, Everywhere. Right, Ross? Nuke'em all. After all, they had the gall to have the skin color of our latest enemies. That about it? Am beginning to understand your reverence for the Old South. bcnu, Mikem The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice and always has been...We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism. - Mark Twain, "Monarchical and Republican Patriotism"
Post #111,121 by deSitter 7/23/03 10:53:17 AM Reply	Nope - by being from the wrong part of Earth ..where ongoing and congenital insanity over non-issues like who is Chosen and who is Righteous, has created an unlivable situation from them, which they attempt to export to us. In a way, it's fortunate that they are so easily identified. Profiling Bubba would be orders of magnitude harder. -drl
Post #111,123 by mmoffitt 7/23/03 11:00:22 AM Reply	Are you reading as you're typing? "They" should be treated differently because "They" come from races not as pure as ours. See, they asked for it. You cannot tell me the above couple of sentences are much removed from your expressed view. bcnu, Mikem The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice and always has been...We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had-- the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he (just he, by himself) believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism. - Mark Twain, "Monarchical and Republican Patriotism"
Post #111,124 by deSitter 7/23/03 11:04:28 AM Reply	Re: Are you reading as you're typing? I wish they had 7 eyes so they'd be easier to spot. Or they were all blanched-white redheads from the north of Ireland. This has nothing to do with what race is better (an idiotic question) - it has to do with spotting possible bad people from bad lands. You can't have TLC security. And I'm sick of being searched at random because some fools across the world can't get their minds right. -drl
Post #111,599 by mhuber 7/26/03 9:22:38 PM Reply	Civilization and life 3000 dead - hell, even if it's once a year - is a pittance to pay for being the kind of country we used to try to be. Even if one of those 3000 is me. The great Republic or Federation cost quite a bit more than 3000 lives to build. I'm downright embarrased - not before the French or anybody, before God and myself and the lunatics who designed the Republic or Federation in the first place - to be a 21st Century American, ready to surrender it all because we are scared of two-bit terrorists. Oooh, we aren't immune from attack. Anybody who's been off this continent - or on the parts where English isn't spoken much - for more than two weeks at a stretch knew that all along. We have no guts anymore. Can't risk our own lives for anything important. Can't risk feeling pain or fear or guilt or lack of closure. Whining about a couple of dead soldiers per day. Home of the brave my ass. One soldier with a stubbed toe for this particular farce is too many, but if it were a war worth fighting, it would be a war worth dying in. Can't deal with our people dying? Don't get into wars. ---- Sometime you the windshield, sometime you the bug, sometime you the driver and you turn on the windshield washer and keep going.
Post #111,616 by Ashton 7/27/03 7:12:59 AM Reply	It does come down to that, doesn't it. No guts, no historical perspective - no Aims: except personal and Corporate cupidity. No 'Gods' either - only the $$ and that lip-service on Sundays - mainly preying: "Dear Father: Please Let Us Win, Like Always." (But if 'We" can't - then Let Me Win, OK?) Because the illiteracy is matched by innumeracy: your "3000" comparison would be doomed to incomprehension. The massive overreaction fits the overall pattern of dumbth. No? What % of the US population could calculate the "percentage" which 3K might be: of 280,000,000 - and get the decimal point within an order of magnitude? OK - TWO orders of magnitude? (What % would know what "an order of magnitude" is?) Are we already Kornbluth's Marching Morons - it seems we're a nuke's-throw away from complete disconnect with humankind. Contrast 'US' with the Brits in the Underground stations during the Blitz. bin-L appears to know our national character to a T. Amazing the mind's access to everything ever seen, read, experienced - all 'plots' - real and imagined. Beats the shit outta digital- funnel- bubble- or Bubba- 'sorts'! My re-collection tells me: The US vox populi is seen now by all: to have abandoned even the usual pretense (for display) of all that civics stuff and especially - all that Principle stuff. Has just sat mute, masturbating on consumption (and obsessed only with "raising That back up, higher") - while barely noticing, as a tiny bunch of Neoconmen reversed as much civilization as took 200 yrs. for us to lurch towards (all the while finding it Rilly Hard to kick the formal-slavery habit: now we do it by proxy and digital banking.) We managed all this in a bit over 900 days! We are now operating from a very old agenda; one quite familiar to me from my Gramma's time, and from a mindset indistinguishable from her xenophobic hatred, jingoistic Know-nothingism - and the ever-present sanctimony of the religio-bigot. And it's hanging out there as never before, for all to see. I think they have seen, were there any doubts about "whether or not we've Really gone Loony". The evidence is now indelible: of what Murica is capable of, and of how casually our disinterested consumers, most non-voting - will let Loonies run amok with the power of all those $$ skimmed from across the planet, especially since WW-II. Shrub has officially ordered the New Nukes (with expected minimal mention in the Corp meeja, then or since. I know - I regularly look for refs. It's a dead 'issue' - despite the truly ominous implications to anyone with a third of a working brain.) Some of this may be reversible, depending on the dice throw of next few months. Decades to atone for the rest? but nobody will ever forget our pewling panic and the massive hypocrisy - even at home. I doubt anyone will have failed to notice too, that the Americans they may have met travelling, in the past: are not running the place. They now have an idea who Is. (Even if many of us haven't noticed even that - yet.) Maybe we'll squeak through, house-clean in the nick of time? Crap shoot. Condolences, Ashton
Post #111,645 by a6l6e6x 7/27/03 6:50:51 PM Reply	Re: no historical perspective Only last night, talked about this with my brother. He was in the US Air Force stationed in Korea in 1962. He had visited [link\|http://www.gluckman.com/NKBorder.html\|"peace village"] at Panmunjom, North Korea three times. His fellow airmen were surprised to learn from him that there had been a war there less than 10 years prior. It's not just "how soon they forget", it's "they never had a fricken idea". The 50th anniversary of the armistice has just been celebrated. Alex A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. -- George Bernard Shaw
Post #111,650 by Arkadiy 7/27/03 8:55:39 PM Reply	People who think 2 lives per day is too many happen to also think this war was not worth fighting. Not the way it was fought, anyway. -- Less Is More. In my book, About Face, I introduce over 50 powerful design axioms. This is one of them. --Alan Cooper. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum
Post #111,179 by jb4 7/23/03 6:32:05 PM Reply	Hugh, the asshole in this thing was the PILOT And those three hundred peopel wh were late wer late because a Hamfisted, power-intoxicated ex-military, my-country-wrong-or-wronger, hasn't had a civics less in over 3 decades shitferbrains couldn't understand that buttons don't hijack planes. jb4 The difference between Confidence and Ego is that Confidence has respect, while Ego does not. Candyce Burns (my wife)
Post #111,190 by deSitter 7/23/03 8:58:49 PM Reply	Utterly wrong These guys follow the script. You think they wanted to go back? When the FA reports an unruly passenger, a script kicks in. Ex-military - even more likely to follow the script. Individuality not needed, merited, or required. -drl
Post #111,218 by Ashton 7/24/03 3:39:45 AM Reply	Brains, common sense are always useful.
Post #111,224 by hnick 7/24/03 7:25:53 AM Reply	Absolutely - might also be a firing offense though I really have no idea what the federal/airline 'guidelines' are for such. It is possible the pilot was just being an asshole. It is also possible that he was risking his career if he did not turn the plane around. I can't imagine that he wanted the hassle of probable paperwork, delays and such. It is probable that the reality is somewhere in the middle. I think that it is a sad sign of our times that common sense/intelligent action are buried under regulations to keep the lawyers/politicos at bay. It's time to dig out the Harlan Ellison and re-read 'Repent Harlequin, Said the Ticktock Man'. It's becoming more appropriate every day. Hugh
Post #111,307 by jb4 7/24/03 4:51:24 PM Reply	And, increasingly, conspicuous by their absence! jb4 The difference between Confidence and Ego is that Confidence has respect, while Ego does not. Candyce Burns (my wife)

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