posted
Oh well I meant UK/US but presumably these things have global consequences. PLUS I think it indeed applies to all flights INTO the UK not just out.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Currently the pan is only on liquids and creams- pharmacy stuff is left alone and carry-on items have to be in clear plastic bags (the airports are giving those out). They cant deny a perscriprion medicine, obviously, but hair gel and toothpaste will have to be bought at your destination.
Not a big inconvience, really. Things are still running faster than at the adverage holiday times.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Which is why, the next time this is tried, they'll just fake the prescription label and medicine, and we can all see how stupid these kneejerk measures really are.
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
Er...to what end exactly? You'd need a LOT of fake insulin to make a bomb. The liquid explosives are peroxide based and dogs are being trained to search out that particular scent (of course, some moron will take a bottle of peroxide into the airport to test this and get himself arrested).
The airport measures are really secondary anyway- nothing was ever brought into the airport: the terrorists were busted before they could even take their "dry run".
I wonder why they were not allowed to do the dry-run though- it would have shocased airport weaknesses....better safe than sorry of course. I bet british agents do the exact senario just to see if the plan would have worked. In fact, it would not suprise me too much to learn that airport security agents from the US and UK stage mock security breaches all the time to better prepare for the real thing.
While driving back from the store just now, NPR had an intresting bit on how over-hyped people's insecurities towards airport safety are: they reported that (all told) the toyal number of people killed on US/UK planes since the 1970's is a close match for the number of people killed by lightening and to severe allergic reaction to peanuts. More people have been killed by earthquakes and brush fires. It reminds me of people's irrational fear of sharks.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:The terrorists would have faced challenges, like adding water and keeping the chemicals cold, Rowe said. But not much of liquid would have been needed, perhaps not more than a few ounces of each.
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A few ounces of three or more pre-seperated chemicals to make TCH. Trickier than it sounds.
All I can imagine is that the terrorists planned to sit together or stash their bottles somewhere for final mixing...the restroom maybe.
quote:"You could put them in slabs under your clothing, or you could wear a belt," he said. "Some people have money belts; you could have an explosive belt." And in a jacket, a packet of plastic explosives might look like a sandwich to a screener at an X-ray machine, he said.
Now that's a far scarier prospect...a worst case scenario woud be terrorists blowing up not the planes, but the terminals full of people with that method.
It's suprising that they have not attempted to load a Blackberry or laptop with plastic explosives...seems obvious, but with millions in use on airlines each day...
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Blowing up a terminal would require massive amounts of explosive, or then lethality-enhancing measures like shrapnel. Either would be difficult to conceal. Poison gas would be much more efficient.
Bombs in aircraft are different, because all they have to achieve is rip the hull in one place, or act as fuzes to what are already flying bombs by design.
If means of stopping the terrorists from taking explosives to planes fail, the obvious second line of defense would be to fly smaller planes, with less loss of life per explosion. Uneconomical from the sheer technological point of view, but OTOH more economical than today's methods in the sense that every flight would be fully booked (and thus need not be triple-booked).
Solving the technological problems would have to begin with adopting a new type of fuel, I guess. And that still wouldn't solve the airport congestion problem. But continental flights could eventually convert to the small-plane doctrine; transcontinental ones would be a bigger challenge.
posted
Chertoff is one scary fucker- he's allready ramping the Fear card by suggesting that the British police "may have missed some suspects" at the same time he's calling for (suprise!) greater leeway in arresting "suspects", no warrants at all needed for "national security" concerns and all sorts of other fascist shit.
This guy is -by far- the single greatest threat to the American way of life- someone that would use terror to achieve his own powerhappy goals.
Wait! Useing terror and fear of impending attacks to cow the populace would make him....er....Republican?
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Just wait till the elections are called off for security needs, after all, we can not have all those people at the polls making for nice juicy terrorist targets, can we?
-------------------- "You are a terrible human, Ritten." Magnus "Urgh, you are a sick sick person..." Austin Powers A leek too, pretty much a negi.....
Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Now, that's just being silly. Sure, there will be massive vote-rigging on a scale that'll make 2000 and 2004 look like. . . umm, simile fails me. And there will be a place in the overall plan for random-yet-calculated security alerts; but they'll just be to slow down the voting process in key Democratic areas, or to provide a dstraction while ballot-boxes are switched or packed or tampered with. And it'll all go unreported - just look at what happened in the elections south of the border, if you can find anything out about it at all in the mainstream media.
posted
You mean in Mexico? That country that disdains the U.S. for employing illeagals for substandard wages...while themselves making virtual slaves of south american illeagls. Fuck 'em.
Do the Republicans even have a candidate groomed...at all? I keep reading how most Republicans are trying desperately to distance themselves from Bush- any way possible....they see the backlash coming. We'll probably see a core of Neocons turn on their master in his final year in the White House- that way they can cclaim to be an "independant thinker" or some nonsense.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I think the neocons' first order of business will be to try to get someone out there who will continue their agenda/do what they tell him (or her, if they do go for Condi; but I doubt they will, there are plenty of rich old white guys who'll be damned if they're gonna lose "their turn" in favour of a black woman). Has Cheney actually ruled out running? And they have two years, why not try to change the Constitution so their butt-boy can stay in office?
Only if all these gambits fail will the panic set in, but it'll be late in the game, not long before the election. And besides, if they don't do as bad as everyone thinks in the upcoming mid-terms, it could be business as usual.
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