What is this “drop acid” of which you speak? Surely she was not allowed to bring caustic chemicals on board, much less drop them?
Sorry dude. I forgot the “:p”.
I didn’t misunderstand the facts. I was given the WRONG facts. My suspicions were perfectly valid if the the facts had been as they were initially represented. They would have been precedented too.
And my suspicions aren’t really that Americans are “racist,” but that non-Muslims are paranoid about Muslims. I also don’t think they’d freak out about black lady or a Korean lady. So cram your sanctimonious inisinuations up your ass, m’kay?
Which didn’t stop you from shooting off your mouth and drawing conclusions about the race of the person detained. How would you react if someone had done the exact same thing, except instead of relying on the idea that the passengers and flight crew were paranoid anti-Muslims, someone stated that, since she was causing problems on the plane, she must have been Muslim. You are committing the same kind of thinking (or lack thereof) that you scream about in others.
I’m not saying there isn’t fear, paranoia, and mistreatment of Muslims, people of Middle-East descent, or even people of darker complexions, especially in air-travel. What my problem is that you immediately assumed (yes, ASSUMED) that the arrested person had to be Muslim, and that it wouldn’t have happened had she been a white person.
:rolleyes: They freaked out about a older, apparently white lady. I know it’s tough, but try to judge the issues on the basis of facts, not on what fits your tedious world-view.
They’re not insinuations, I’m out and out calling you a hypocritical asswipe. And the m’kay thing is so blase. Try and work on that.
So the real issue is whether or not a “gotcha!” can be put on Doggyknees?
This is a retarded comparison. The way the facts were initially presented, it sounded like people were making stuff up from their on overactive imaginations. In fact, it sounded exactly like those on the plane thought she was an al Qaeda terrorist for no rational reason I could see unless it was ethnicity. Remember, I thought that any statements about aQ had already been denied by the airline, as well as any allegations that she possessed any weapons. Given that (falsely presented) set of circumstances, ethnicity seemed like the only reason left why people would think she was a terrorist. There’s not a fucking thing unreasonable about that suspicion.
I still think that if the facts had been as they were originally represented, it would NOT have happened to a white woman. What did happen is not what I was TOLD had happened.
They freaked out because she was saying the word “Pakistan,” moron, and because the flight crew thought she was alluding to al Qaeda. If those factors had not been present (and we were initially told they were not), then there would have been no panic.
Well then man up, Hammy, show me how I’ve been hypocritical. In a word – cite?
You decry the drawing of conclusions regarding a person’s ethnicity, yet you seem more than willing to do so when it fits your worldview. Simple enough, no? A woman gets detained for a disturbance on a plane, and you assume she’s a Muslim and you assume it wouldn’t have happened had she been white. Add in your willingness to uncritically accept facts that fit your worldview only exacebated the problem.
Not that any of this will sink in. For years I’ve agreed with you on the issues, and been embarrassed by you in debates, and, no matter how many times I point out problems I see with you, they get ignored. I regret ever trying again, so I’ll go ahead and go back to ignoring you now.
No worries. 
As soon as I clicked on the link I got the joke.
-XT
Well, post number one and post number two of this thread would tend to indicate that the woman was Middle Eastern. The second one even says so. Is it so outrageous to jump to that conclusion when innaccurate information was the only information we had?
Everything I know about this case I learned from this thread. So where do we stand now? A white woman returning to the US had an attack of weirdness and the other passengers, the pilot, and the crew freaked out? Then rumors flew that she had a notebook about al-Qaeda in English and Arabic? But in reality no such thing existed? Do I have it right?
I am still trying to figure this out. False accusation about screwdrivers and notes are made against a woman. DtC jumpts to the conclusion that the woman is muslim, or percieved to be muslim or at least is not white. His reasoning, this would not happen to a white woman. So when it turns out the woman is white it should be obvious that his line of reasoning is in fact false. yet somehow in DtC world this is not the case at all. This is not a case of his own prejudicse coloring the way he viewed a situation which was entirely false.
Makes complete sense to me.
My assumption was not based on the fact that she was arrested but on the (erroneously reported) fact, that people on the plane thought she was a terrorist when she had done and said nothing to suggest that. Now it turns out she DID say something to suggest that when I thought that had been ruled out, ethnicity seemed like the only reason people would make that leap? Is that really so unreasonable. Can you suggest another factor in the absence of any weapons, threats or statements related to Islamic terrorism, why people would think that a lady having a panic attack was a terrorist?
My reasoning wasn’t false. The reports were false. I don’t know why this is so hard to understand. I still say that a white woman (or a black woman or a Puerto Rican woman) would not engender paranoid assumptions (and fabricated assertions about weapons, notes, etc.) just because she was having a panic attack unless she was either a). making some kind of statements which were at least in the neighborhood of suggesting some terrorist intent or b.) she was perceived as Arabic/Muslim. I initially thought that the first option had been ruled out. That left only option b. Now what’s so horribly offensive about my reasoning?
It certainly fits your worldview, just like those “facts” you relied so heavily on.
5 years of fear instilled in the public, in a good part due to this administration? Rather than that simple emotion, you decided that it must have been due to bigoted thoughts by the passengers and flight crew. Some of the passengers would have thought she was a terrorist, no matter what her complexion. And some of the passengers would have thought anyone with a darker complexion is a terrorist, too. But the one thing they have in common is fear. And you don’t help the situation when you automatically assumed her to be a Muslim.
What exactly is my “worldview,” Hamlet? I’m really curious.
My initial post said nothing about the woman’s ethnicity, because a) it wasn’t reported, and b) I certainly didn’t assume that she was Middle Eastern or Arabic.
I really don’t see how her ethnicity works into this situation. As fate would have it, after all the facts have come in to date, the OP is fairly accurate. (No indication that she wrote in Arabic on the notes, though, but as she appears to have visited Pakistan several times it’s not implausible.) While she did not reference al-Qaeda directly, her references to Pakistan, indicating something being built was in its final stages, and stating that she was affiliated with an organization with two names that she couldn’t mention (and claims got her kicked off another flight) definitely signalled to the flight crew that this woman was having serious problems. And that she was a potential threat to the safety of the crew and passengers.
I don’t even know why the al-Qaeda reference even matters. You have a passenger acting erratically on a plane, who’s referring to the fact that she has illegal items in her carry-on. She might not be able to hijack a plane but she could certainly do damage to a passenger or the crew. There was another passenger who had an immigration issue - the pilot probably had this information, figured that this combination of events was worrisome, and made the decision (with the folks on the ground) to land.
As I argued in the recent Pit thread about profiling, there’s no reason to assume that the only people that pose a danger on an airplane are members of al-Qaeda. Attention getters, kooks, “wannabes,” and others might have an interest in making a name for themselves in this way. As Hentor the Barbarian noted upthread, this sounds like a person experiencing more than a panic attack. Why take a chance on this woman injuring others, disrupting the flight, or even injuring herself? And I imagine even one passenger acting bizarrely severely compromises the crew’s ability to deal with any other situation.
I’m actually pleased to hear that this woman didn’t get preferential treatment because she was White. I’ve read accounts of other flights that returned because of passengers behaving oddly and the response of the crew sounds remarkably similar . I also put more credence in the information that the crew had versus that of the passengers, because in the stories you’ll see some reporting that this wasn’t a big deal, and others reporting that they were very frightened. The crew are highly trained and they deserve credit for handling a difficult situation as well as they could - as far as we can tell.
Dio, I get where you’re coming from, and I see a logic in your reasoning. And I don’t think you’re a card-carrying member of the KKK simply because you acknowledge that other people might harbor racist thoughts.
I do, however, see a flaw in this logic. You think that if someone is accused of being a terrorist, then they must either a) look like a terrorist, or b) act like one. I posit that there may be far more reasons than those two. I beg you to consider alternate theories. (Not necessarily related to this incident.)
Let’s try an example. Let’s say a middle aged white woman (as a totally random example) was acting in a way that was erratic, and some passengers and the flight crew perceived her, possibly correctly, to be a risk to the well-being of the flight. Repeatedly telling her to sit down has proven ineffective. The pilot decides to terminate the flight by landing at a closer airport. In order to keep the woman from hurting herself or others, a flight attendant and a couple of passengers subdue her.
So… problem passenger was subdued, and the flight was terminated because of that. How long do you think it would be before at least one person, perhaps even on the flight itself, wonders out loud if the incident was somehow related to terrorism? How long would it take the rumor mill to spin that off? How long would it be before at least one moron in the press decided to report it as “possible terrorism”?
If you answered “about three seconds”, you’d be in the ballpark.
Unless you want to pay me $200 an hour for therapy to discuss your worldview and how it affects your life and your posts here, I’ll pass. I don’t have the time, or the inclination, to help you out anymore.
Your reliance on astoundingly poor intelligence would suit you well in this White House.
I agree with all this but my understanding was that the rumors had begun on the plane while it was still in flight.
Jesus wept. That’s fucking pathetic.
I think elucidator is correct. I also thought you were going to go back to ignoring Diogenes. What happened?
You mde an assertion that I was drawing to conclusion to fit my preconceived worldview. It’s only fair to ask you what you think that worldview is.
Everyone else was drawing conclusions from the same available information and it really doesn’t alter the fact that if that information had been accurate, then my suspicions were not unreasonable.
One more thing, I don’t think anti-Islamic paranoia is limited to white people. I don’t se it as whites distrusting non-whites but as non-Muslims distrusting Muslims.