Nigerian Man attempts to blow up Plane
 

I'm surprised no one has posted about this yet. A Nigerian man who boarded a connecting flight in Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas day attempted to blow up the plane 20 minutes prior to landing. Thank GOD he failed. I tried looking up flight patterns to see where exactly the plane was at that time. Being so close to the airport, I'm really curious.

I hope this doesn't sound creepy, but I honest to goodness thought about you when I heard about this story. Not that Nigerian terrorists remind me of you, but that you live in that general vicinity.

Oh, I was hoping that Nigerian terrorists made you think of me! ;) AGDee is in my area too. It's so freaky. Someone said that since it was 20 minutes away from landing, it could have been in Canada or Ohio. I'm assuming not Canada since his alleged target was the US.

There was some discussion of it in the Random or What do you feel like saying right now thread at the time. I think they were far enough out that they weren't actually over Michigan at the time. They were possibly over Lake Erie even?

Then yesterday they had another scare on the same exact flight, but it turned out the guy was genuinely ill.

The second incident got me wondering about language barriers during international flights. Just because the pilot and crew are telling someone they have to stay seated for the last hour of the flight, doesn't mean the person understands what they are saying. What a mess.

The original guy was on a terror watch list yet he was able to fly here? But you hear all kinds of stories of mistaken identity putting people on the No Fly list (like Ted Kennedy at one point).

Bottom line: No security is fool proof.

Maybe this guy was mad because I didn't send him his money from the Euro Lottery? :D

SHUT UP!!!!! LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOO

It was missed because this story was soooo much bigger than crazy Nigerian extremists. ;):D

I'm gonna tease all my Nigerian friends today....I bet they are sooooo embarrassed about this! Every Nigerian person I know is so proud to be Nigerian that I know this guy is such a smear on their country.

*giggle*
but in all seriousness, I was glad to hear of how the other passengers helped subdue this guy.

That's probably not such a wise idea...

Nigerians that I've met are more ethnocentric than they are nationalist. If I told this story to my Yoruba friend, he'd probably say "I bet it was a fucking Igbo."

Oh, you may be right, Senusret, but I'm still gonna do it...my friend Tay and I can joke around like that...

The Nigerian profiling has begun..."Meanwhile Sunday, another Northwest plane on the same route and with the same flight number was met by police at the Detroit airport after the crew raised an alert over a passenger who "spent a lengthy time in the restroom," said Sandra Berchtold, a spokeswoman for the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
The second incident turned out to be unrelated to terrorism, officials said, attributing the passenger's prolonged time in the restroom to "sickness."
That passenger was released from custody and allowed to take a connecting flight."
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/12/28/...mpt/index.html

Poor guy has some GI distress, and he makes the national news!

I talked to one of my partners today who is Nigerian. He laughed when I asked him about it and said, "Don't you start!" His comment was that this kind of behavior is out of character for Nigerians who are "fun loving and jolly!"

wow that sucks. You catch the runs and get questioned
for it.

It wasn't Nigerian profiling. A man put together an explosive device in a bathroom before landing. They made a rule now that you cannot get up or go to the bathroom an hour before landing. This man was insistant on going to the bathroom and was there for a long time. If I had been on that plane, and it were ANY passenger acting like that, I'd be pretty scared especially since the other incident was the day before. Poor guy only had to shit but it's better to be cautious and safe than sorry.

So I guess we all need diapers before we take our next flights...hehehe!

So what's going to stop the next terrorist from putting together a bomb an hour and 10 minutes before landing? Dumbest rule I've ever heard!

Nothing, but you probably won't be over American soil then.

Oops, double post! Astronaut diapers all around!!!

In Detroit? Doubt it! Either way, we'd still have a bunch of dead Americans.

What do you mean in Detroit? That makes no sense. I'm glad you're taking a terrorist attack attempt so lightly.

Yes, most flights coming from Europe to Detroit are only over American soil for the last hour, if that. If you blow up the plane earlier than that, you are probably over the ocean and you minimize the damage to those people actually on the plane. That was my understanding for their reasoning for the "last hour" thing. Although, so much of what the media is saying is speculation anyway.

Today, Al Quada's Yemeni wing has claimed responsibility:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2...?section=world

AGDee...you know that was one of your online boyfriends coming for you!!

LOL.. my co-workers and I were joking about that earlier :) It's all the Nigerians from match.com and they are ticked off cuz I reported them!

I saw that but I doubt it. These groups claim responsibility things they have no hand in all the time.

Honestly I think he's a lone fanatic that asked someone to teach him how to do it. Had he had more support he would have succeded.

Oh don't start putting your racist mumbo jumbo crap and making me look glib (calling all Tom Cruise jokes). I certainly don't take terrorist attacks lightly, but sitting in your seat for an hour is a ridiculous solution to save us from a future attack. So is stopping men from boarding planes with arabic writing on their shirts which, if I remember correctly, you were all for! I fly at a minimum 20 weekends a year, and let me tell you, sitting in my seat for the last hour of a flight will sure make me feel so much more secure knowing some guy in the back could have some PETN bomb strapped in his underwear, but he can't get to the bathroom to detonate it.:rolleyes:

Oh. snap. :D

It takes me more than an hour to fly from the east coast to Detroit when I've been there. Maybe they fly faster when coming from Europe. I stand corrected. Either way, you put together the bomb at 1hour 10 minutes, go back to your seat and detonate it closer to landing. That bomb wouldn't have made much of an impact on a city anyway. It was meant to bring down an airplane. It had enough power to blow a hole in the side of a plane. A plane at the end of a trans-atlantic flight would have little fuel and would crash killing the people on board no matter where it landed. The point of the 911 hijackings was that it involved planes with full fuel tanks that they used to crash into buildings causing major damage. This bomb was meant to terrorize like the Lockerbie bombing. It didn't even happen in the US, but that didn't terrorize us any less.

For one, I'm not putting my racist mumbo jumbo crap out here. When I fly, I'm leary of any creepy looking person. Timothy McVeigh was a terrorist and I'm pretty sure he was white.

And that bomb would have had MUCH impact on a city. They just reported on our news that had the bomb succeeded, it would have been over St. Claire Shores or Grosse Point.... two very residential areas. When planes crash they don't say "oh hey here's an open field, fall there", not that there'd be much open field in those two cities. And I can't believe your respect for other people's lives. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? A bomb is a bomb and a terrorist is a terrorist no matter how many people are killed.

Actually, many of the news reports point out that the point of the guy detonating the bomb so close to the end of the flight wasn't just to bring the plane down, it was to bring it down in a densely populated area so that the debris and everything could cause more casualties on the ground.

WOW! That LITERALLY hits way too close to home for me. By the way, take that E from Clair and give it to Pointe :)

The Amsterdam to Detroit flight takes the "polar" path so most of the flight is over the north atlantic and Canada, only entering U.S. airspace the last 30 mins of the flight, hence why crazy man waited until descent to attempt to blow up the plane.

Yeah, right! And where did you learn that little factoid? Care to revisit the infamous thread? http://www.greekchat.com/gcforums/sh...d.php?t=102169 Are you really afraid of white people now, too, or did we just teach you to add Timothy McVeigh to your list to throw us off? BTW, is your "friend" a Pakistani or a Palestinian now?

I will accept and apologize for my ignorance of Detroit. But PM Mama, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? A bomb is a bomb. You are making my point. Whether we save the cities or not, we are still leaving the people in our airplanes in danger with nuts strapped with explosives with cheesy "sit in your seat for the last hour" solutions to solve an attempted terrorist plot. Was he in the bathroom when he tried to detonate the bomb? NO! Would that rule have prevented him from assembling the bomb an hour and 10 minutes before landing to go back to his seat and detonate it when he wanted? NO! The rule, as I previously said, is STUPID! The ONLY reason that plane didn't blow up was because the detonator FAILED. Not because of any security measure in place. I for one feel no safer for any safety measure thought of so far.

As for my respect for other's lives, before you question other's dedication to human life, question your own dedication. What do you do in a single year, much less a day for anyone in your xenophobic, can't get into an elevator with anyone other than a child, scared of her own shadow life than yourself? I measure my respect for other's lives in more tangible ways than respect for a dumb rule thought up on the fly after a scary near miss that also produced a thoughtless comment like, "Our system worked" from Janet Napolitano. Maybe if you thought about something beyond yourself, you might too.

Oh, and BTW, if you can't find humor in the situation or compassion for the poor Nigerian man who was ripped off the toilet and arrested for having a GI bug, than you have no soul.

That's going to be super effective, you know, since ALL terrorists look creepy, and all creepy-looking people are terrorists!

So, do you choose one person at random in each of these threads to attack about being un-American, a terrorist sympathizer, and void of compassion for human life? Stop being such a drama queen. AOII_Angel isn't really even disagreeing with you. Get off her damned back.

Also, I get that this is scary for you, being a resident of Detroit and all, but jumping all over someone else's shit because you're scared is counterproductive. I totally understand why this stuff would freak you out, but honestly, I wish more people could think about these things logically or even be "cold" about it, because emotional responses to things like terrorism and fear of other countries wind us up in places like Iraq.

Remember Total Recall? Well now it's real...see what the Dutch are doing now.


and


TSA expands security measures

Will we soon see 3 the boobs lady?

Oh, the pat down. I wonder which one people with argue more about? Seeing them naked or feeling them? Thank you, Mr. Terrorist. You have just made international travel that much more difficult. Oh well, I'm still going to Paris in April!

I remember that I was in Sweden when the whole liquid explosive thing happened...we freaked out that we wouldn't be able to get back to the US. It wasn't that big of a deal; we just threw out all of our liquid toiletries that we didn't feel comfortable packing in our checked luggage. After 9/11, I had to travel to San Fran for the American College of Surgeons Convention with two colleagues, one from Bahrain and one from Afghanistan. We told them to stay with us (white americans) at all times. We didn't want them to look suspicious! Who ended up getting flagged at security...both ways? Me, the giggly blonde. I thought it was hilarious.

or find the location of Quatto aka bin Ladin?

Hmmm that's what it is...bin Ladin is some kind of mutant fused to another human!