Well, maybe there are some guidelines for this sort of thing, and NorthWest alerted the authorities that a large number of men from a notorious country (Syria) were flying to LA, and subsequently, air marshals were deployed. I don’t know, it could happen. Same for the feds waiting at LAX. Standard precaution, maybe. Still, the men were innocent, so the woman’s story is completely moot. Then again, I realised it was going to be complete horseshite when she said:
Aware Americans. Snort. She misspelled “xenophobic idiots”.
I was that Syrian musician on board. Like, damn, was that a tense flight! I was surrounded by all these nervous white folk who kept on giving each other worried looks and suspicious glances. I’m sure they must have been up to something! One kept whispering to the flight attendents and then she looked worried too. Then one of them started crying like she was going to die or something!
Did they know something we didn’t? I wanted to ask, but they were freaking me out and my English isn’t so good.
I don’t mind admitting I was so nervous that I had to go visit the little boy’s room more than a few times. I also took my prayer mat in there with me to offer up a few prayers for our safe deliverance.
When I got home I did some research on a hysterically fundamental Arab web-site that said “Americans are just plain nuts and are rapidly disappearing up their own paranoia. Stay away from them.” So it must be true.
Perhaps if I write this all up I could get it published someplace.
To reiterate: even if everyone including the entire FBI were to have legitimate suspicions, and there were 50 Secret Service Agents and President Bush with a howizter on board ready to take on the terrorists at a moment’s notice, the men were ultimately innocent. In other words: racial profiling failed, in that instance, to accomplish anything at all other than get lots of people needlessly scared and worked up. Thus, it is sheer and utter nonsense to turn the incident into a case for doing lots more racial profiling. If anything, it proves the exact opposite conclusion: that simple racial profiling basedon nothing more than ethnicity and nationality is a waste of time and resources. If it proved neither case, then it should just have been the system of profiling was already working fine: suspicions were raised, reports were made, an investigation was conducted because of them, and ultimately everything was okay and safety was ensured. But a case FOR more racial profiling?
Probably for no other reason than the fact that 14 Syrian men purchased one-way tickets on the same flight. Hell, maybe just because 14 men purchased one-way tickets on the same flight, but I suspect the Syrian passports had something to do with it as well.
Which is what really leaves me scratching my head about this woman. From her own account, it seems the TSA was on top of things, quite probably over the top. What else, exactly, did she expect the authorities to do in this situation? Deny them entry to the plane, on the grounds that they were Syrian? Perform cavity searches every half-hour in flight? Leave the 14 men stacked naked in a pile at the back of the plane? What?
I almost started a thread about this myself. A local radio guy here was blowing it way out of proportion yesterday and wondering why other passengers didn’t demand explanations from Syrians about their behavior, like Middle Eastern folks have some kind of obligation to justify taking a piss or having a conversation in NotEnglish.
Some of the commentary by this racist, hysterical, paranoid bitch was just absurd in it how she put the most elaborately sinister interpretation on every little detail. A guy smiles at her and she says it was “cold and defiant.” What the fuck does that even mean? Defiant of what? What constitutes an objectively “cold” smile?
It also pisses me off that this woman, as well as the right-wing radio trolls, keep ignoring the fact that these guys were innocent! Their story checked out. There was nothing untoward in the luggage or in the bathrooms.
Christ, they were probably huddling together because all the white people kept eyeballing them. They probably thought they were going to get jumped.
And what a dick Jabobsen’s husband is too. He says his “instincts” told him to get off the palne as soon as he saw a bunch of Syrian dudes. Well, your instincts were WRONG, weren’t they, fuckhead?
I love the way how Jacobsen kept playing up her fear for her son as well. Won’t someone think about the CHILDREN!
God, Americans can be embarrassing assholes. I guess this is just her way of grabbing attention and sympathy. The sad thing is, it seems to be working.
I think this is a key point. While I consider myself about as non-racist as a liberal white guy can be, I myself would have been nervous flying with a bunch of Syrians. I don’t like flying, and anything that my brain can turn into a plane-slamming-into-the-ground-at-800-mph scenario, it will. But once I landed safely, I would have realized that my fears were unfounded, since they were only based on the nationalities of the people involved and there are plenty of reasonable situations in which several Syrians may be on a plane.
My guess is that the hysterical defenders of this woman are only hearing “it’s racist to consider the possibility that any Middle Eastern men may hijack a plane” not “it’s racist to assume that all Middle Eastern men are probably hijackers, even after you’ve been told a specfic group fo them aren’t”.
I saw this person on television talking about the scary Middle Eastern men and agree she is a hysterical bigot lady. However, her husband was on the same program and also saying hysterical bigoted things. Key to his train of thought was the fact that the scary Middle Eastern men would attack his family and he would not be able to do the manly-man thing and save them. He was also getting ready to act to protect people in a “Let’s Roll” fashion it seems.
Nobody mentioned Mr. Hysterical Bigot, so I thought I would.
On the one hand, I would certainly have been edgy about anyone needing to go into the bathroom to prep equipment. Do it when you get off the plane. If I can’t carry nail clippers, you can’t start assembling gear in flight.
On the other hand, this woman’s insistence that not only was the situation suspicious, but that that means these people were criminals fingers her as an hysterical racist degenerate. This is just like that woman who managed to ivoke millions of taxpayer dollars and start a panic all over Florida because some Muslims had the nerve to eat at the same restaurant as decent, god-fearing Christian white people.
Oh, I don’t know, he could have been warning the other guy about the food on this particular airline or something.
But how did she know he mouthed “no”? Why would he communicate his Secret Evil Execution Plan in English? For that matter, how does she know he wasn’t speaking Arabic and actually saying “yes” (na’am)?
But since this is the Pit, I can add that the bitch in question and her asshole husband are utterly without any redeeming value, and the loss of their worthless lives would have been the one good result if the plane had blown up.
Both are fucking dumb as nails: incapable of distinguishing reasonable fears and perhaps a reasoned defense of some degree of racial profiling from stories in which they present nothing but supposition that anything happened other than a) ironically, the very sorts of investigations they claim aren’t happening b) some Arab-looking guys who manage to freak them out by merely existing. Horowitz, using his formidable detective skills, sagely notes “They didn’t appear to be students or have any business purpose (no suits for example)” and that they were “so similar to Atta in facial expression and general appearance.” Ultimately he satisfies himself by concluding that instead of blowing up the plane, it was more likely that, if they were terrorists, “they were going to join some Islamic radical cell planning a future terrorist attack, perhaps one of those dirty nuclear bombs to be set in five American cities we’ve been reading about.” He is satisfied in the end by the appearance of men in jumpsuits and the fact that he doesn’t see the men again.
To be fair, Excalibre posted her letter in the pit and in the form of an angry hyperbolic rant to publishers. These two dumbasses went on national TV to peddle their hatred with dead sincerity and seriousness.
Ah, but there’s more. Two people on this thread have said that the men were found “innocent.” Some pundits are veerrrrrry suspicious of this. After all, no one will say what casino these men were hired as musicians at, and no one can seem to track it down. OBVIOUSLY, there’s something more going on, and the Feds are covering up something, perhaps a further investigation or their own incompetence…
IOW, even when they’re declared innocent, they’re STILL suspicious and guilty.
As much as I hate to give credence to the hyperbolic cries of racism and bigotry herein, it appears that the feds’ story checks out. The Syrians in question were musicians.
For what it’s worth, the story was broken by the “nominal” news editor for Stanford’s student radio station. Apparently, the investigative journalists at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the major television networks never thought to pick up a phone. The kid from Stanford even wrote a pretty funny article.
Fair warning, the link is to the National Review Online, a conservative magazine if ever there was one. Some of the folks that have been hyperventilating in this thread may want to wash their computers thoroughly after opening the link.
I would have been instantly suspicious of any passenger of any race who appeared to eat food from McDonalds in the airplane restroom. That’s just not right.