This story identifies her only as being from Vermont, and a US citizen.
Yeah, I just heard that. Isn’t Vermont the Whitest state in the union?
Anyway, I think there’s more to this than “lady has panic attack.” The luggage was on the tarmac being inspected by bomb-sniffing dogs. Maybe the feds required it, but if it was just this isolated example of a woman losing it, that seems to be one hell of a response…
Please provide a citation that the person of interest was not white.
The story in the online newspaper now is saying:
OK, strike “anything handwritten by me or Mr. Neville” from the list of anything I can take on a plane- both of us have totally illegible handwriting.
Fox 25 in Boston had interviews with passengers from the plane:
[ul]
[li]The woman had been behaving strangely, moving back to the restroom repeatedly, according to passengers.[/li][li]Some passengers claim she was writing notes to the flight attendants.[/li][li]After she was restrained, she was handcuffed and placed in the back row of the plane with two men watching her.[/li][li]One passenger stated that he didn’t feel the woman was a threat.[/li][/ul]
Actually, i believe that title belongs to Maine, although Vermont used to be the champ, and is still in second or third place.
Just out of curiosity, for you to be convinced that this was, in fact, just a panic attack, exactly how many articles would you need to see in which the TSA explicitly states that there was no terrorist connection and that the cause of the disturbance was panic brought on by claustrophobia? Would 10 be enough? 100? A Google News search using the words “diverted flight” brings up at least 680 articles related to this incident alone, and virtually all of the recent stories (i.e., after the initial misinformation) have had quotations from Boston airport officials, the FBI, and the TSA stating very clearly that, as far as anyone can tell, the cause of the problem was a panic attack, and that there is no terrorist link in evidence whatsoever.
Given the way you jumped to conclusions in the OP, and expressed a hope that the woman had the “living shit” beaten out of her, you’ll forgive me if i don’t place much credence in your current skepticism.
Just out of curiosity, as I’ve seen it reported numerous times (obviously falsely as we now know), what exactly is so sinister about the Vaseline? Are they afraid she may have wanted a quick poke in the bottom or something? What could you use it for to bring down a plane exactly? Why was this picked out as something that would indicate she was a terrorist? Anyone know?
-XT
Maybe someone was going to slip a bomb in the…ehm…“back door”, so to speak?
That was my thought exactly. 
-XT
Where is that citation that she was non-white, FTR? I was watching this news all day and didn’t see a single mention. I would hope that this citation would be timestamped earlier than the time the claims were made in here, right? And the citation that she was a Muslim? I can’t find anything, so I must be doing the wrong searches…
Guess you missed my post here, champ. I certainly retracted that inflammatory comment, and even in the OP I mentioned that the facts weren’t all in. You don’t find it a little odd that two F-15 jets were scrambled and followed the plane into Logan? It seems we all had significant misinformation at some point.
As far as your credence in my current skepticism… not really a big concern of mine.
I’m assuming it’s related to the whole “no liquids, no gels, no toothpaste” rules that have been in place since last week’s UK arrests.
Loopy, XT, you guys are tres perv
On the other hand, there’s the fun of imagining the look on an airline exec’s face when somebody from Home Sec. tells him “Yeah, from now on, we’ll have to stick a flashlight up your passenger’s Nixon to check for explosives…”
I was going to incorporate the screwdriver, but that would have just been tasteless, now wouldn’t it.
You’ve got me. For some reason I had the impression the woman had been identified as Arabic. Now reading back over the news stories, I can’t find any confirmation of that and I have no idea why I thought that.
Myself, I’m too pure of heart and clean of soul to even THINK about the screwdriver implications…
:eek:
-XT
Holy shit. Tell me you’re not serious.
This has to be the absolutely most callous thing I’ve heard anyone say in a long time. I can understand the frustration, but seriously, this is low. You actually want someone to be ravaged by a panicked mob. Were you always this mean, or did you take classes?
Using my imagination, perhaps it was not really Vaseline. Or maybe there was the fear that there was something more sinister concealed within the jar/tube/whatever. Aren’t there actual explosives that are kind of putty-like? I am no bomb or explosives expert, but it seems to me that someone recently was working on combining a couple of otherwise harmless things while on board a plane to make a harmful thing? Yeah, I remember reading that somewhere…
I can’t let you off so easy. You said,
It’s not that you were incorrect about her being Arabic. You insinuated that a whole flock of people were racist because of their actions. That was a nasty cheap shot which had no basis in fact. Who’s the racist here?