Patriot Act expiring + firecrackers on airplane = agitprop

[grasswire]

How stupid are Americans?

Just as three major provisions are about to expire, the national conversation is dominated by an incident where a man sets off a few firecrackers on an airplane -- an incident where there was NO POTENTIAL for significant injury.

Terrorism!!

Raise the security levels!!

Fear!!

How stupid are Americans?

Did we learn nothing from a forged letter about uranium?

[glowing]

1. Seriously.. Is this what the media will howl about to try to extend the UnPatriot Act

[grasswire]

2. Look at the coverage

Fear, fear, fear. Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism.

Next week the Patriot Act will lose three provisions to the sunset clause. James Sensenbrenner is crowing about the need to renew those provisions.

Terror!! Terror!!

[iconocrastic]

31. I agree - it was obviously a staged event to give Obama cover to renew the Patriot Act

/ sarcasm off

[im1013]

3. Yep. You hit the nail on the head.

That's exactly what I've been saying since I heard about it.

Boy, this shit's getting old.


:nuke:

[Joe Chi Minh]

29. Yes. That makes sense of the negligent security. I'd suspected it was a false-flag operation

gone wrong.

[WeDidIt]

4. It's a conspiracy I tells ya!

[Joe Chi Minh]

30. That's right. Try to scramble our brains.

[babylonsister]

5. Appears to be more than a few firecrackers...

The plot to blow up an American passenger jet over Detroit was organized and launched by al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen who apparently sewed bomb materials into the suspect's underwear before sending him on his mission, federal authorities tell ABC News.

Investigators say the suspect had more than 80 grams of PETN, a compound related to nitro-glycerin used by the military.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7327312

[WeDidIt]

6. Sounds like he had the chemistry knowledge

but was incompetent in the engineering of a functioning device.

Luckily, a fellow passenger saw what was happening and acted quickly. Had the device been well engineered, there would have been no time to act.

[boppers]

28. PETN is a detonation booster, it works better when combined with RDX.

Sounds like he had a lousy detonator, and thus, couldn't get a chain reaction going.

Same problem as the shoe-bomb guy, confusing "flash fire" and "detonation".

[grasswire]

13. most of the DUers in that thread are skeptical...

...of this story.

Pretty interesting how this guy has confessed to an act of terrorism within 24 hours when most al Queda operatives endure hundreds of repetitive torture acts.

[stevenleser]

14. Not interesting at all. Al Qaeda is comprised of loosely knit cells with very different people and

levels of training. Its very difficult to make generalizations about the kind of people you find in one of those cells.

[babylonsister]

22. Pretty interesting that you seem to be trying to articulate a

conspiracy theory where I don't see one at all.

[BklnDem75]

25. 5/38 posts don't equal most

So your stance is this was planned by the government to gain support for the renewal of the Patriot Act? I just want to make sure.

[iconocrastic]

32. Yes, those poor, poor "al Queda guys"

whom we mercilessly torture.

[stevenleser]

7. No, no, no, and no.

#1 - It wasnt firecrackers. That was the initial breaking news report that was corrected.

#2 - There is almost nothing a foreign national arriving on an international flight could have to do with provisions in the Patriot act. The Patriot act has to do with domestic terrorism or at least foreign nationals residing here temporarily and also with money laundering, surveillance and searches of domestic and international groups and border security. Put more succinctly, if you wanted to justify the Patriot act by an act of agitprop, you would stage an attack by a group supposedly residing (temporarily) here in the US.

#3 - The terror alert level is unchanged at Orange. Sure, airports and airlines have temporarily increased security, but that isnt the same.

#4 - No one besides you is connecting this event with the Patriot act and that includes justifying it or saying it isnt needed.

[grasswire]

9. I'm sorry about your naivete.

Did you happen to read that other DU thread, pal?

[stevenleser]

15. You mean the one you didnt link to in your response to me? No. Not yet. (nt)

[grasswire]

17. somebody linked it previously. scroll up. (n/t)

[davidpdx]

36. The guy is an idiot

[BootinUp]

8. What a great example of delusion for the sake of ideology.

I would like to see your face had you been one of the passengers near the attempted attack. I bet you wouldn't be posting shit like this either.

[grasswire]

11. wrong on all counts

How does "ideology" come into play here?

The Bushies taught us (or some of us apparently) to question even more than ever unattributed statements from the government especially regarding terror attacks.

Facts. When we see facts and/or statements with attribution, then we can consider the ramifications of the incident.

There's no way that a story from ABC with no names associated with the assumptions has ANY value.

Try to be a little more discerning and skeptical! Here's your first clue that something's amiss in this story:

"Investigators say the suspect, Abdul Farouk Umar Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian student whose birthday was last Tuesday, has provided detailed information about his recruitment and training for what was supposed to be a Christmas Day suicide attack."

And the passports for the 9/11 bombers fluttered down and landed intact on the NYC sidewalk.

And the Iraqis threw babies out of incubators!

And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and.....

[FrenchieCat]

10. Life is just one big conspiracy!

Every wonder why you were born?
Think about it.

[grasswire]

12. oh, okay, I get it now.

The Obamabots are going to have to hype this "terrorism" story to help him get the provisions of the Patriot Act renewed, and attack those who insist on facts and truthiness.

Just like the Bushies had to parrot every message useful to that White House.

[jenmito]

20. Did Obama raise the terror alert level? No. Did he or his team come out and give a

scary warning? No. He is NOT Bush-like. Do you realize how many "terrorist plots" have been stopped on Obama's watch? Probably not-because he didn't have Napolitano or Holder come out and give speeches/warnings about each one. Don't let the facts get in your way, though.

[WeDidIt]

23. Yep, it's a MASSIVE CONSPIRACY!!!

[Bodhi BloodWave]

34. only ones i see 'hyping' this, is people like you, and based on nothing but conspiracy

[jenmito]

16. If Obama was trying to scare us, he would've raised the "terror alert level." He didn't. n/t

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jenmito]

19. I proved your OP wrong. He did NOT raise the terror alert level. But you're a mindless hater. n/t

[stevenleser]

21. Yep. Mindless hater completely uninterested in facts. (nt)

[WeDidIt]

24. Told you it was a massive CONSPIRACY!!!

[phleshdef]

26. What dumb shit. He had PETN on him, a fucking plastic explosive!

This shit was used during the world wars and its one of the most powerful high explosives that exists.

Firecrackers my ass.

[boppers]

27. The PATRIOT act wasn't expiring.

Some provisions in the act were.

Provisions which, BTW, had nothing whatsoever to do with airplane security, travel, or monitoring the behavior of foreign nationals outside of the US.

So, how stupid are Americans? Are we stupid enough to think that there's any connection between business records searches, and that they are somehow influenced by attempts at airplane explosions?

I don't think so.

[cliffordu]

33. More true idiocy.

[winyanstaz]

35. and to cover up this perhaps?

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1887-dred-scott-redux-obama-and-the-supremes-stand-up-for-slavery.html

[vaberella]

37. Apparently this act is legitimate the thing is the guy wasn't known to have clear ties.

I could be wrong on that last part. I think you should take a step back. Dangerous times calls for dangerous measures. I don't like this Patriot Act shit, but considering what's happened in the past and continuous terror threats in Europe---I live in France in every major station I see military with guns. The government is being cautious. While we may not have seen too many recent actions---Europe is different and doesn't mean it's not being cooked up here.

[IndianaGreen]

39. 'Dangerous times calls for dangerous measures' How totalitarian!

Goes hand in hand with the overused "extraordinary times calls for extraordinary measures."

[vaberella]

40. Yup...it might be totalitarian...but I'm used to it.

I noticed a lot of people complaining...it seems to me they were not "traveling while Black" post 9-11. The random screenings were not random. I flew about 20 times post 9/11 and my Black ass along with every yellow to brown minority or those who looked like minorities were singled out to be humiliated. Shoes taken off, jackets, we were padded down and then had to pass detectors all our luggage was searched thoroughly. 20 times and it was very common place. I liked the BS that I was randomly chosen and so was everyone else----it was completely not the case.

You get desensitized to it. No one was there advocating for us during that time or probably even cared much. They were "protected" while others of us were picked as possible enemies. And not to mention this stuff is still going on. Now though it's just happening to EVERYONE and not a select few.

[Sultana]

38. Y'all are stupid!

Obama is NOT Bush!!!

If you can't see differences betw. the two then u r dumbshit!