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This was an overreaction by the author. At the very least it smacks of the Susan Smith "OMG, my taurus with my 2 boys has been carjacked" incident (where every mail list and mailbox was filled with "be on the lookout for...." spam while her car was at the bottom of a lake) with a major dose of racism. What is it with people nowadays? All middle easterners are terrorists? Has everyone forgotten McVeigh and Krar? Or do we erase from memory any terrorism done by white supremecists, while only noticing terrorism done by dark skinned folks? Rebuttal by Snopes.com: http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/skyterror.asp Another link on the incident: http://www.donaldsensing.com/2004/07/casing-northwest-327-threat-or-hoax.html Info on Krar and the cyanide bombs in texas: http://www.thememoryhole.org/terror/tyler-terror.htm Somedays, I am embarassed to be white. Maybe the server is back up by now, so I can get back to work. Catchya later.
Wow can you say "paranoid white chic!". In all my years in the Marines and later in Law enforcement I never saw a description that detailed from an untrained witness ever be remotely close to what actually occured. For example we used to play a series of games that went like this: We had glass doors (bullet proof) on the front of one of the buildings in a diplomatic district of a country which shall go unamed. People would walk by all the time. The guy in plain clothes in the lobby would get a call from somebody in the camera control saying something like "in a few seconds a man in a grey suit will walk by, remember everything." Then the guy on duty would have about ten seconds to memorize every detail of the guy as he passed. Meanwhile the guys in the monitoring area are taking high resolution photos from every angle of this guy. Then a few hours later when the guy on duty comes off duty his seargent would sit down with him and qnd quiz him on what he remembered. The Sgt. would have the photos so he could verify or nulify what the guy said. The other game we played involved a box full of objects. On training days the Sgt. would open the box for about four seconds, we would all look in side then we'd go train for the day. At the end of the day we had to write down everything we remembered about everything we had seen in the box sometimes this could be up to 16 hours later. Then we were graded on it. Both of these games were f#cking hard! It takes a few months to get good at it and you have to constantly practice or you will loose it. No way on God's green earth could some normal civilian under pressure retain all the info she claims to have retained about what happened. For instance when you are a peace officer and you respond to an accident at an intersection one of the first things you ask witnesses is "what color was the light?" do you know 99.9% of the time the witnesses can't give you an answer. If they can it's often wrong. You have to get the consensus from a bunch of them to actually get a feel for what color the light really was. I'll bet you 50 bucks if you had a video of that flight you would see something totally different then what she described.
Gotta love Snopes.com. I think the main problem with this article is that Annie Jacobsen pretty much lied in some parts of it, either that or the flight attendant was just going along with her. Did the flight attendent ask her husband to 'write a description of the yellow-shirted man'? Did the flight attendent admit to Annie's husband that 'they were all concerned about what was going on. The captain was aware. The flight attendants were passing notes to each other'? Having those accounts as part of the story makes it seem like it wasn't just Annie and her husband were alarmed, but the whole crew AND the secret agents as well, which makes it that much more believable.
Peter: Did you read the snopes piece? It's main contention from what i got was that it was an overreaction - not that she lied. There are a ton of things on both sides substantiating what she said as well as negating it. The dudes web site was kinda freaky though. The main thing that pisses me off about the whole incident is that if it's ok to hassle 7 old ladies than it should be ok to hassle 7 of anyone. The fact you CAN'T search more than 2 people is what annoys me. I admit she's a bit hysterical but she wasn't the one that 'made up' the issue about assembling things in pieces either. Oh well, defintiely makes for a interesting debate.
Andy, you have to be one of the most interesting people I've ever come across - you always get me thinking. I definitely see what you're saying here and it makes a lot of sense. I know if I ever see some sh1t like this, the camera on my iMATE is going to be running. I know the airline industry is pissed though - they were set for a record travel season and this is probably going to cuase a couple of ticket cancellations. I'm surprised that the dude and his band members haven't come forward, would defintiely make for an interesting debate. I noticed that in her updates she hasn't backtracked on anything she said or tried to clear anything up so i think she definitely believes what she wrote - but the effect you mentioned above more than explains that. What did you do in law enforcement? There's probably quite a bit of interesting stories there ;-)
Skicow: It's defintitely an interesting issue. Did you read Andy's comments on it? I think thhe chick believes what she's writing and there's some truth to it, but I also think she overreacted. I've been hearing and reading a lot on both sides that's food for thought. If 4 air marshalls or whatever were on their, that definitely makes me suspicious a bit, particluarly in light of Andy's comments - they certainly don't want anything to happen , particularly when they are on the flight. Defintely an interesting can of worms.
Yeah, I've read Andy's comment's and I've heard about that before, and seen it in action as well. I was a witness to an accident, it happened at a red light when I was the first car in line. A car was turning left and didn't see the other car coming straight through the intersection and BAM. I stuck around to see if they were ok, and as a witness afterwards. There were 4 other people who stuck around as witnesses as well and it stunned me how different our acount of the accident was. I'm not saying that all my info was correct, it probably wasn't, but there was not one point that all 5 of us agreed upon.
Skicow: I just remembered something - I have a package for you sitting in the closet - Yikes - send me your address again to the devbuzz address - I'm going to the PO tomorrow and I'll send it then.
"What did you do in law enforcement?" - quote Bill, For a while I was a state trooper. I quit though it just wasn't a job I fit well into. Later on after I got out of school I have gone back and done GIS crime analysis apps and such for police depts. which much more closely fits what I like to do. I liked the fun action parts of the state trooper thing, I couldn't stand the paper work, the fact that they would schedual training on your off days, and all your court appearances got schedualed for off days. The lifestyle blows, and the job was not mentaly challenging in any way shape or form. You have to really love it to stick around. I have a lot of respect for people that do it for a living but I hated it. I have never since then worked in a job that was such a bad fit for me. I thought it was going to be like a civilian version of the Marine Corps. It wasn't even close.
Bill, I never claimed that Mrs Jacobson was lieing. When Ms Smith rolled the car with her kids into the lake, everyone with an email address or fax machine was getting "OMG look out for a white taurus, carjacker is a negro male" spam. Links to this post by Mrs Jacobson comes across just like that: they are on almost every blog or message board I encounter. In her story, Mrs Jacobson claimed: As I stood up and turned around, I glanced in his direction and we made eye contact. I threw out my friendliest "remember-me-we-had-a-nice-exchange-just-a-short-time-ago" smile. The man did not smile back. His face did not move. In fact, the cold, defiant look he gave me sent shivers down my spine. A couple of decades ago, black men would be lynched for "staring at a white woman." Perhaps we should put a rope under every airplane seat and have a lynching tree at the end of every jetway? That seems to me to be the desire of her post, the new improved "birth of a nation." I thought that we, as a nation, came a long way aways from our racist past. Her story, and the speed at which it is spread, scares the heck out of me. Do you see where I am coming from and how this story makes me sick? Reread her story, but instead of "middle eastern men" imagine it says "black men" or "jews." I think it will sound very racist, and not something to brag about.
Peter: Ok, I stand corrected - I definitely see your point.
hi
Hello Hellis - How's it going?
OMG is this supposed to be scary i mean come on give us something scary!!!! your all freaks go die and burn in HELL!