You’d think a bunch so dreadfully concerned with the safety of its citizens it’s willing to throw the document the nation was founded upon into a shredder would be willing to implement something your average American might actually need…like, I dunno, health insurance.

I\’e2\’80\’99ll tell you this. I have to throw my hands in the air and surrender in this forum. You people can\’e2\’80\’99t even understand a simple thing.

I’m sorry, but you are the one who is showing absolutely no signs of understanding. Several of us have explained, at great length, exactly how your position is logically and realistically indefensible. We can tell when we’ve won because you shift topics. For instance, you’ve gone from trying to prove that an iPod can be a weapon of mass destruction to the following semi-coherent (and I’m being generous in granting that “semi”) paragraph:

If liquids are forbidden on planes, and someone is then found with it, it\’e2\’80\’99s a big alarm. That terrorist, if he isn\’e2\’80\’99t successful in hiding the liquid/gel that\’e2\’80\’99s forbidden, all of a sudden is suspect. On the other hand, if there\’e2\’80\’99s no restrictions on these things, he\’e2\’80\’99s free to proceed to try to blow the plane out of the air.

Okay, now just what exactly does this have to do with the reason an iPod that fell into a toilet is somehow more dangerous than exactly the same iPod where it was before its owner had that unfortunate mishap, namely clipped to his belt?

You have clearly given up trying to refute our arguments, possibly because you have neither facts nor evidence nor logic on your side. Instead you’re ranting about … um, I’m not really sure. You seem to be saying that if someone smuggles a forbidden liquid onto a plane there is, or should be, a security alert, but if liquids are not forbidden, then they’ll be blowing up planes left and right.

Assuming I have successfully winkled an actual position out of that disorganized mess, I’ll respond to what I think you’re trying to say there:

Um, yes, having a prohibited object on a plane will definitely get the attention of the people whose job it is to keep those objects off the plane. In other alarming news, driving 90 miles an hour down the highway will get the attention of the cops, and there are even reports that stuffing DVDs under your coat will attract a certain amount of interest from store security. Thank you for the information, Captain Obvious.

Now, what this has to do with iPods stuck in toilets is totally eluding me.

Now, as to the proposition that if there are no restrictions on carrying liquids onto planes, then our hypothetical terrorists will be free to blow them up:

First of all, there’s the matter of liquids in general being rather inconvenient and impractical explosives. Yes, there are some. Good ol’ nitroglycerine comes to mind. But they’re neither convenient nor practical, nor something that the average terrorist would want to be carrying around. (do you still get the free ticket to paradise if you get blown up when your car hits a pothole on the way to the airport?)

Second, there have been no exciting new developments in such explosives in the past month, or year, or five years. Nitroglycerine, as an example, was discovered in the 1800′s. So was TATP, for that matter, but it has to be precipitated and dried to make a really effective explosive. If this threat from bottles of Gator-Aid and the like really existed, it has existed for a very long time. Only in the run-up to a critical election has it suddenly become a matter of concern for those involved in spreading terror — by whom I refer to politicians who see political advantage in it. Even assuming that nobody considered the possibility of terrorists blowing up a plane prior to 9/11, that’s still almost five years that the government’s top experts have had to think of all the ways it could be done. It is highly unlikely that they would have missed something so obvious.

So, we’re left with the following possibilities:

1. The government experts are in fact morons, and never thought of this possibility.
2. They thought of it, then dismissed it as not a plausible threat.

In the case of option 1, we’re screwed anyway; a supposed who couldn’t think of something supposedly so purportedly simple that a bunch of wanna-bes in England thought they could carry it out is going to have difficulty finding his ass with both hands and a map.

In the case of option 2, we have to consider why a possibility long ago dismissed by the experts is suddenly being given attention by the government and certain mouthpiece news organizations. When I see a government trying to get voters all riled up, and when I see an upcoming election which is critical to the ruling party, I tend to suspect a certain connection.

What do you find so complicated about that? Everyone wants to keep their job. I’m sure you want to keep your job, right? I certainly want to keep my business. Why do you find it so hard to believe that politicians would do everything they could to get re-elected?

Incidentally, there are many excellent explosives available in solid form. Far more than there are liquids. What do you suppose is keeping people from walking onto planes with all manner of them? Think about that for a while. Scared yet? You should be. I apparently know a significant amount more about both explosives and airport security than you do, and I know the answer to that question … and I also know several ways of getting around it. Since I do not, in fact, believe the experts are morons, I have to assume that they’re as aware of those methods as I am. What I, a random blog wanderer, can think of, I’m sure Al Quaida can think of, so I’m sure they, too, are equally aware of those methods. No liquids are required. Nor iPods. And the results would be quite spectacular. Given the lack of planes raining out of the sky, one should, I think, be looking elsewhere for the reason it’s not happening. That reason is certainly not a ban on tweezers or Gatorade.

Something else to think about: Someone could have flown a couple of planes into the Twin Towers, or anywhere else they wanted, for a very long time. Why did they decide to do it five years ago, and not long before? Look at the reasons for that — and don’t ask me what they are, I’m a website designer, not an intelligence analyst — and you might get some idea why they haven’t done it since. I guarantee you, it’s not because of a ban on tweezers.

Why is this so freakin\’e2\’80\’99 hard to understand?

Because you have presented no facts. Because you have argued from authority without citing that authority. Because you have made unfounded conjectures and treated them as proven. Because you have squirmed out of the way every time one of your statements is taken apart. Because you wiggle like a worm to avoid having to respond to the point-by-point posts people have made. Because you have not, in fact, really presented any case beyond “I know I’m right.”

Like I said, I give up. You people responding this way are either way too slow upstairs or you just simply will not accept even reasonable explantions in your fervor to be anti authority.

Give me a reasonable explanation and I’ll consider accepting it. I haven’t seen one yet.

So far, your explanations seem to be founded more on Kool-Aid chugging than on reason, logic, and facts.

For example, in the matter of the Madrid bombings, “I don\’e2\’80\’99t think there can be any other explanation than that someone placed a call to that cell phone in order to try to trigger the explosion that they knew didn\’e2\’80\’99t go off in the original bombing.” The “other explanation” you couldn’t think of was a wrong number which reached the relevant cell phone. Instead of considering the everyday, plausible explanation, you went straight to the tinfoil hat department and decided that the only possible explanation is a months-belated attempt at blowing up the unclaimed baggage bin, for some incomprehensible reason, and a simple wrong number doesn’t even enter into it.

Jeezus! I give up. As time goes on, as we experiance more attacks and more people die, you guys keep blaming the boogeyman government.

Could you explain to me, if you would, exactly how many of those attacks have occurred in the United States, and how many people have died? From your rhetoric, you seem to think that they’re happening on a daily basis. Could I have some numbers here? You said “…as we experience more attacks…” not “…if we someday experience more attacks…” By your words, they are occurring. So which ones have I missed?

Now what, exactly, am I blaming the government for? For wasting taxpayers’ money on useless “pacifiers” instead of spending it where it will be actually effective? For allocation of “incident response” grants based, not on risks or threats, but on the political strengths of various members of Congress? For inducing terror in members of the public in order to boost a party’s support prior to a critical election, at the expense of national security? Yes, damn straight I’m blaming them for that. But that, my friend, is the part that you are refusing to see.

You want Big Mommy to protect you. You feel loyal to Big Mommy and thankful for that protection. You are a true victim of terrorism: You live in terror, so much terror that you will gladly throw away the very principles the United States was founded on if Big Mommy tells you that is what you have to do to get that protection. For you, life is so dear, and peace so sweet, that you will willingly purchase it at the price of chains and slavery.

I renounce victimhood.

I refuse to live in terror.

And I will not be silent.

Why is this so freakin’ hard to understand? Like I said, I give up. You people responding this way are either way too slow upstairs or you just simply will not accept even reasonable explantions in your fervor to be anti authority.

The government is implementing security procedures which will not actually prevent any real threats based upon arrests of some muppets who didn’t have much of a clue about how to blow up an aeroplane.

This isn’t going to stop any real terrorist threats and so is nothing more than an invasion of our liberties.

You carry on feeling safe that no terrorist is ever going to smuggle a binary liquid explose onto a plane, combine it there and explode it with their iPod.

I’ll wonder when a terrorist is going to walk onto a plane with a real explosive and destroy a plance without the intelligence services ever finding out because he knew how to keep his gob shut.

http://english.pravda.ru/

Current headlines: “Paris Hilton clone found in the Ukraine”, “Pregnant man carries a twin-brother”, “New killer storm attacks the USA”, “Man lives for 11 years eating only sunlight”

Arguably this is not terribly different from the rest of its history.

Greg’s right. You really have to knock off the Kool-Aid. It’s turning your brain purple.

If any of the experts seriously believed that an iPod could be rigged to do all the highly improbable things you’re trying to persuade us it could do, iPods wouldn’t be allowed on planes in the first place. I mean, c’mon, they ban tweezers for the love of God! You believe the government to be all-wise. The TSA has banned anything potentially more dangerous than tweezers. Therefore, by your own logic, iPods are not as dangerous in the eyes of the government experts as tweezers are. So it would seem that the very government you worship has declared that you are, in fact, wrong.

I have, incidentally, an extremely active and flexible imagination, and I have been unable to devise a plausible scenario in which a plane could be brought down by the use of tweezers. I can’t even think of any option that would not, in this post-9/11 world, require a proctologist to retrieve the tweezers from whoever tried to use them for nefarious purposes.

Like I said, it would take an expert who knew what to look for to recognize it. Just because you lack the immagination to figure it out, don\’e2\’80\’99t assume everyone else lacks such basic immagination too. But I\’e2\’80\’99m not going to spell it out here for obvious reasons.

So why, then, is there no restriction on walking into a plane with an iPod?

Please, at least be internally consistant.

What does it matter where it was found or why it was there? It was out of place, and raised alarms. I never claimed that it might have been placed there on purpose.

Why? Simple: That iPod was no more of a threat in a toilet than it was on its owner’s belt, or in his pocket, or in his luggage. When he explained how it got there, that should have been the end of it.

Still, two Russion planes went down and it was determined that the explosions were triggered in the toilets. So something unusual found in a planes toilet is alarming, reguardless of what it is.

In Pravda is no izvestia, in Izvestia is no pravda. Though you’re probably too young to even get the reference. Yeah, Pravda (and those who picked up the story from them) ranted for a while about Chechen terrorists and half-kilo bricks of explosives being set off in the toilets. They should stick with reporting on the opening of new tractor factories. So far as I know, nothing has been officially determined about what caused the crashes. It does take a while, you know. The TU-154 went down during a violent thunderstorm, incidentally.

Now, think like a terrorist here for a minute. You are a suicide bomber. You are going to try to crash a plane in which you, personally, are flying. Now, which way do you want to go about it?

1) Leave your explosive unattended in a toilet, where anyone can find it, and possibly do something like, oh, chuck it out of the plane before it goes off. Or just flush it, so you do nothing more than blow out the drain valves from a tank full of, um, let’s not go there.

2) Hold it firmly against your choice of vital targets and trigger it manually, so you know exactly when and where it’s going off for best effect.

Timed or remotely detonated explosives are great for bombings when the bomber intends to survive. That’s why terrorist groups like the IRA love them so much. But if you’re on the freaking plane, you’re not going to survive. You knew that when you got on board. You made your videotape and wrote out your will last night. You kissed your mama goodbye. You’ve got your one-way ticket to paradise. So why in the name of all that’s holy would you choose to use a much less reliable way of setting off your bomb … one that might not bring down the plane, or might not do anything at all except get you arrested … when you could do it right, make sure it works, with less difficulty?

Russian airport security, by the way, is notoriously lax. If someone did in fact set off a bomb in a plane’s toilet, it’s highly unlikely they did it with a rigged iPod. For one thing, I can’t think of any explosive that is both strong enough to do the job in such a small quantity (especially if you want the thing to keep playing music) and stable enough to want to risk carrying around, let alone survive all the travel and handling involved in getting it on a plane. They’d have a much easier time just bringing along a supply of the plastic explosive of their choice stuffed into something else and setting that off anywhere they wanted to. Or, for that matter, just bribing some random underpaid ground crewman to give them access to the plane beforehand.

Yeah, you are right that the bombings in both England and Spain used cell phones as timing devices. But you\’e2\’80\’99re leaving out an inportant fact in both cases. In the English bombing, one of the bags was left on a bus and exploded sometime later than the others. Did the timing alarm not go off, and was a call made to set off the explosion?

Maybe. Or maybe the alarm was just set wrong. Occam’s Razor for the win.

And in Spain, the critical evidence was from another bag, this one didn\’e2\’80\’99t go off at all. It was stored along with other unclaimed items for months before it rang, alerting the police to check it out. The wiring evidently wasn\’e2\’80\’99t hooked up right to cause the explosion. This was months after the bombing. I don\’e2\’80\’99t think there can be any other explanation than that someone placed a call to that cell phone in order to try to trigger the explosion that they knew didn\’e2\’80\’99t go off in the original bombing.

I think there most certainly can be another explanation: It’s called a wrong number.

If I was going to make such a call to blow up that bag, I’d do it right away, not wait months. I’d do it when the bag was still on the train, not when it had sat in unclaimed baggage for ages and was unlikely to do anything more impressive than blow up a baggage bin somewhere.

According to your argmunets, someone leaving a bag behind in a public place should cause no alarms or reactions at all. Am I correct?

Nope. But then again, given your apparent inability to use logic, reason, or common sense in reading my arguments, I don’t really expect you to understand.

For one thing, a person leaving a bag behind intends to be not there when that bag explodes. A person with one of your magical rigged iPods would be in the plane — remember, that toilet was checked earlier (they are) and had no iPod, so the owner had to be on the plane — and therefore, it would make no sense just to abandon the thing. Much more effective to set it off personally. Quit trying to set up that straw man, it keeps falling over.

Let’s look at it this way: You see an iPod on a plane. In which of the following places would you consider it — the exact same iPod — to be a threat worthy of the response that this incident had:

1. On a passenger’s belt.
2. In a passenger’s pocket.
3. On a passenger’s tray table.
4. On an empty seat next to a passenger.
5. On the floor in front of a seat.
6. In the aisle somewhere.
7. Outside the door of the lavatory.
8. In the toilet.

Picked one? Good. Now, please explain why that location is more menacing than the lower-numbered ones.

I get the distinct feeling that you won\’e2\’80\’99t believe anything. You\’e2\’80\’99re railing against me for seeing the boogeyman, yet look at yourself. You see the boogeyman in everything about this war on terror. But when one looks at the facts, we are being attacked by terrorists and people are dying.

No. I see the natural inclinations of rulers to expand their powers at the expense of the ruled. That’s human nature. It’s something every society throughout history has faced, and we are no exception. That’s why eternal vigilance really is the price of liberty.

And the “war on terror”? How can you declare war on an emotion? You know what the biggest source of terror is? Scare-mongers whipping up panic to sell newspapers, get votes, improve ratings, whatever their personal profit happens to be. fnord

We are being attacked by terrorists and people are dying. Um, right. Yeah, it’s happening every day. No, no, don’t try to tell me that only Big Mommy and our noble politicians have protected us and otherwise we’d all be dead. That’s like me saying that my lucky charm protects me from being trampled by purple elephants — I can prove it because I remain un-trampled and capable of writing this post.

We have been attacked by a lot of assorted evildoers in the history of this country. People died. Fortunately, prior to the past few decades, we were not a nation of wimps. We were not a nation of cowards. We were not a nation of bootlickers. And we most certainly were not a nation of people eager to cower behind the skirts of Big Mommy. Freedom meant something to them. It clearly does not mean anything to those who are not just drinking the Kool-Aid but slamming pitchers of the stuff.

The liquids/gel business isn\’e2\’80\’99t about mixing things together during a flight. It\’e2\’80\’99s about explosives already made being smuggled on board, and then rigged electonically to be exploded.

Check your scare stories, you’re getting it wrong. The whole scare was about the possibility of people mixing up explosives (TATP being the main candidate) on the plane from innocuous ingredients.

And the terrorist attacks are carried out almost exclusively by people of middle eastern decent. Greg, com\’e2\’80\’99on man. Facts are facts, don\’e2\’80\’99t ignore them.

[snark] Why not, you do? [/snark]

Terrorist attacks are carried out almost exclusively by people of Middle Eastern descent. Um, yeah, right. Like in Oklahoma City. Like in the Tokyo subways. Like in Omagh. Like in Atlanta. Like in all the places bombed by the Red Army Faction (and its kindred) and the ETA and the Armata Corsa and the IRA and the Chechens and … well, and I could keep listing them for a while, but I doubt if it would make a difference to you. Christians. Jews. Muslims. Sikhs. Hindus. Atheists. Weird do-it-yourself cultists. I can find you examples of terrorist attacks for each and every one of them.

I find it mind-boggling, in this day and age, that I am arguing with someone who — despite access to a worldwide information network — displays such profound and willful ignorance as you do. It truly makes me fear for the future of all I hold dear.

Yeah. That’s me ignoring facts. Try actually reading some of the links I posted above or for that matter anything not put out by FoxNews. You make baseless claims about iPODs but I am ignoring facts…clever.

“And the terrorist attacks are carried out almost exclusively by people of middle eastern decent.”

Wow. If ignorance is bliss, you must be the most blissful person on the planet. That statement is so far from wrong I don’t even know where to begin. Really you have to stop watching FoxNews.

See in your mind the word terrorist = middle eastern Islamic person. There is nothing exclusive about terrorism to people of middle eastern decent. Look at Chechnyan Rebel tactics, look at the past in Ireland, or look at current times Africa, Central America and South East Asia. Terrorism is an effective tool and has been used that way for a very long time, and will continue to be used that way.

In your mind America is where the world starts and stops…so if people of middle eastern decent (in the case o f 9/11 guys from Saudi Arabia) attack America then the whole world is under attack by guys of middle eastern decent…right so Saudi Arabia attacked us…so uh…why are we in a war in Iraq?

Bottom line. Too many Americans think in very simple terms like you do. You buy what the gov’t says because “the gov’t is here to protect us!”. I only wish that was true. You now live in fear of being killed by a “terrorist plot”. You jump every time the alert goes from one color up to another color, even though it means absolutely nothing. You have a healthy supply of duct-tape and bottled water. Like I said before, you have already been beaten by “terror”.

Bah. I shall now return to lurking since nothing more I can say will matter.