"no specific, credible intelligence"
So nothing new there then.
FBI issues prosthetic pregnant belly bomb alert
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are warning US law enforcement agencies to keep a sharp look-out for "a new type of terrorism" in which apparently-pregnant women suddenly go bang due to the fact they aren't really mums-to-be at all, but cold-hearted suicide bombers packing explosives inside a swelling prosthetic …
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 14:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Fake security has a real purpose
Look, you might think all this stuff is just FBI dreaming up bad movie plots, but it has a serious purpose. They have a huge silly money budget and are trying to find ways to spend it.
USA makes more US$ to inflate their economy. It dillutes their debts, and pays their bills. They may be $10 trillion in debt but they define what $ is, so they can define $ =0.5$ and magically they've halved their debt.
What they try to do is pump this freshly printed money into the US economy. If they can create a domestic business with that money, it inflates their GDP (and reduces their debt as a fraction of GDP). It also reduces their trade inbalance as a percentage of their overall economy.
They can't pump it into housing because that's over inflated. They can't give it to consumers because that would suck in imports. They can't pump it into stocks because PE ratios are already silly.
They're stuck because they're making money in a vacuum, there's no huge boom in industry creating that wealth, rather the wealth is created and a boom needs to be found to attach it to.
This is what this 'security' wackiness is all about. It's about finding somewhere to spend/waste billions in projects that will be done in the USA by American companies to inflate the US economy. That in turn pulls in foreign capital to invest in these cyber security firms which puts some substance validating that industry with some hard currency.
It's all about the money, nothing else, they need to find endless silly security projects to pump these dollars into otherwise they'll have runaway hyper inflation.
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 14:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck...
"the powers that be are reportedly a tad concerned that it's "actively recruiting people who look like Americans and sound like Americans to carry out the next attack on America"."
They *look* like Americans, they *sound* like Americans, but they're *not* Americans, oh no, because legitimate US citizens don't blow things up. No, not Kaczynski, not McVeigh and not Nichols. If they blow things up, they must be foreigners.
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 14:40 GMT Alexander Hanff
Here's an interesting concept...
Maybe, just maybe, the people that sound and look like Americans actually are Americans and maybe, again just maybe, these Americans are not actually being recruited by El Nasty but are in fact just ordinary American people who are pissed off with their "unelected" president and general state of their government???
Alien because they told me to write this...
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 14:42 GMT Stuart Van Onselen
But what about...
...the "bomb in the prosthetic leg" trick? Or the "swallowing lots of explosive" bombers' ruse? Or the "small bomb hidden under the hat" bombers?
Sure, we have no credible evidence that anyone plans on actually using these techniques, but we're sure they're thinking about it! And they could look and sound American, like that famous AQ operative Timothy Mcveigh*!
In fact, the best thing to do is to be scared of _everyone_, all the time.
(Please remember to be especially shocked at the immorality and deviousness involved in using the sacred state of pregnancy as a ruse.)
*) No, seriously, some ultra-right lunatic actually wrote a book trying to link Mcveigh to AQ. 'Cos no God-fearing American could do something like that without being influenced by eeeevil Muslims, oh no!
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 14:42 GMT Daniel Wilkie
I can give them some more...
Explosive prosthetic manhoods, explosive prosthetic legs. In fact lets just stop anyone with prosthetics, or clothes entering the country eh? Is it just me or does this sound a bit paranoid?
I'll get my coat - I need to go to the store and get some tinfoil before they sell out...
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 14:42 GMT Mark Ireland-Spicer
I loved the bit
about: "actively recruiting people who look like Americans and sound like Americans to carry out the next attack on America". So in a country that has been populated by just about every race across the course of its history I'd love to know what an American looks like!!? I guess that actually means anyone not of middle-eastern origin, or perhaps you only qualify if you wear a checked shirt and are called Bubba!!
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 14:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Let's start here, shall we?
"actively recruiting people who look like Americans and sound like Americans to carry out the next attack on America".
That makes the prime suspect... Americans!
They have the most likely match to the target group. Send 'em all to gBay for a week of interrogation, soon weed 'em out...
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 14:59 GMT Ferry Boat
TV dinner
Wasn't that 'plot' on some programme on the BBC or Channel 4 a few months ago? So, the FBI have got around to viewing a TV programme. Mistook it for real life and said 'in the wake of recent attacks overseas' it's a gonna happen here.
Really, the terrorists can just sit back and do nothing. We do it all for them. Now is the time to fear pregnant women. Wonder what they'll see on the telly next.
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 15:16 GMT James
Oh for gods sake...
Enough already.
In Hitch hikers Guide to the Galaxy I remember there were the 3 space ships into which one planet packed all their "entirely" useless members of society. Is there any reason we can't do this with all the "fear-mongers" and "TerrorIndustry" moguls that come out with this rubbish?
Next we'll have cops shooting pregnant women on the tube......... as well as people listening to MP3 players, using Mobile phones, listening to "Londons Burning", carrying dodgy looking CDs (in pairs as supplied by HMG Departments), carrying more than 100ml of liquid, carrying a wooden chair leg (oh - I forgot they'd already done that), using a GPS, using a 4 X 4 (could be going to ram the local airport), buying gas for the barbie, etc. etc.
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 15:24 GMT Chris
War On Terror
Unfortunately, it sounds like muslim women should now be subjected to random strip searching and maybe eventually even more intrusive probing in order to protect the _real_ innocent people. If they resist then they are probably terrorist sympathizers anyway. After all, if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear.
It is incomprehennsibe why these people hate what America stands for. I guess that's what makes them pure evil and why George Bush's christian crusade must continue.
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 15:25 GMT Anonymous Coward
HHGTTG...
in the classic Hitch Hikers, the story went that 2/3 of society decided to rid themselves of the useless 1/2, so they invented a story about an asteroid crashing into the planet, and devised a plan to build 3 ships to evacuate the planet. However, they decided the "most important" 1/3 should go first (telephone sanitisers and media studies lecturers) as they felt it would be "good for morale for the remainder to know they could get a good haircut when they arrived".
When the useless 1/3 crashed into the destination planet, they decided to use the "leaf" as a unit of currency leading to massive inflation. So their executive committee embarked on a plan of deforestation to tackle the problem.
The destination planet was later revealed to be earth. And you thought it was far-fetched .....
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 15:32 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
So now they can suspect people who look like ...
Americans AND non-Americans. This saves them time deciding whether or not to suspect you (that can be so taxing on the average agent's mind (or what passes for it (yes these comments are getting recursive (I can handle that (can you? (if so do you know LISP)))))).
hat (Aussie, not US-style), coat, gone
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 16:51 GMT Mike
It was to be expected
It was only a matter of time before the next stage of the reproductive process became involved. After all 'Bush' is involved, we've got T.W.A.T. (The War Against Terror). It's time the womb was involved now...
Mine's the maternity dress with the front zip for easy access to the Semtex, please...
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 16:51 GMT Spleen
This is a great idea
Presumably the idea behind this is so that if a pregnant woman gets on a bus or a train, every single able-bodied person will leap up and crowd into the corner furthest away from her, allowing her to sit down and have plenty of space. It was our loss of respect for others that made this necessary, I tell you.
Now all they have to do is issue a warning about bombs hidden in old ladies' wigs, and they'll get their seats back as well.
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 17:37 GMT Matt Bryant
It's easy to mock.....
But one of the reasons the 9/11 pilots weren't picked up was because nobody actually thought anyone would use a commercial airliner as a weapon rather than the old Palestinian trick of just hijacking them. A very real reason for the FBI report could be that the Palestinians have already tried the "pregnant" bomber trick against the Israelis (along with using the mentally handicapped, a trick AQ have since copied) and it wouldn't take a genius to predict AQ may look at some new options. Personally, I'd be more worried about the old drug mule trick of packing a dozen swallowers (hence the Paris icon) on a flight and just telling them the swallowed condoms that are packed with explosives are actually full of drugs. Just one going pop in a window seat should bring an airliner down.
As for AQ looking for sympathisers that "look and sound American" they may just be looking for a replacement for American traitor and AQ propaganda fluffer Adam Gadahn, who may have met his seventy-two raisins in the same strike that took out al-Libi.
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 17:41 GMT I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects
Where did all this anti UnitedStatesandAmericanism come from?
7 years ago we all donated to the New York fire department fund. (OK if we'd know 12 months earlier maybe some of us would have sent in phones that worked.)
30 years ago we forgave them Viet Nam. As anybody could make a mistake.
60 years ago they were Europe's darling and every household in Britain gave a florin for a statue to one of their presidents.
If George Bush died and we were invited to send a turd to to make a pile of shit to bury him in, the fund would be oversubscribed in an hour.
Where did it all go wrong?
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 21:14 GMT Paul
Exploding arse
"And then there is of course the explosive arse."
Well, would *you* want to be trapped in an airliner next to someone who'd binged on Guinness and vindaloo the night before? I'd feel less mortally threatened sat next to the mad-eyed middle-eastern-looking guy whose shoes were ticking...
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 21:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
I wonder how the anthrax is coming along
> Or have the anti-terrorism alerts evolved into parody?
No, but the bill on eavesdropping by arbitary decision at the pleasure of His Most Excellent and Esteemed Unitary Leader and President with retroactive amnety for the telecom outfits who abided by His Earlier Will (while the taxman and general tsarist nastiness will do for such traitors as Qwest) is currently being discussed in the senate.
Ah no. Strike that. It passed with comfortable majority.
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 23:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
Satire
I have to admit that when I saw this detailed 'threat' was supported by "no specific, credible intelligence", but that they'd gone ahead anyway, the only thing I could think of was Brass Eye: "Now that is scientific fact - there's no real evidence for it - but it is scientific fact".
Somehow I doubt anyone could successfully satirise most of the 'terror' warnings as they're already a joke.
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 23:51 GMT Jon Tocker
It's called:
"Pre-empting".
They KNOW it's only a matter of time before one of the twitchy morons in their staggeringly-large number of ARMED Law Enforcement/Security/Military/Espionage agencies throws a spasm and accidentally blows away some harmless pregnant white chick who has a Southern accent so broad you could actually carve bits off it and sell it to the clinically "under-accented".
So they are releasing advisories about "explosive preggy bellies" and "using people who look and sound American" NOW to cover their arses against any backlash later.
@ I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects:
Speak for yourself, I personally wouldn't give the bastard the steam off my turds.
@ "Good to see... " by AC:
"But why disguise yourself as a pregnant women (max explosive carrying capacity circa 10lbs) when you can disguise yourself as an average American and smuggle 200lbs of explosives under a golf shirt?"
That'll be the next preemptive "advisory" based on "no specific, credible intelligence" to cover them should they accidentally blow away some poor lard-arse frantically huffing his way through a crowded public area to get to the doughnut stand - the cops are likely to become quite intimidated by a large bulky mass bearing down upon where they are gathered...
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Wednesday 13th February 2008 23:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
It Is Only A Small Advancement
This serious and frightening disclosure by an important TLA (three-letter agency) is merely a first step in GWB's plan for slowing the proliferation of unwed/unskilled/uneducated Mothers in the USA, and for mitigating the horrible financial burden they place upon more productive (non-child bearing) members of society.
In the future, all pregnant females must be escorted by a blood relative (husband, father, brother, etc) who is of good standing in the community, who can attest that the female is actually and honorably gravid.
While we're at it, why don't we mandate that all pregnant females must wear robes of concealment. For the good of the unborn child, of course. Maybe we could withdraw their right to vote as well. Crazy idea, giving potential terrorists the right to vote. What would happen if they voted against an important bit of anti-terrorist legislation? Such as retroactive immunity for large criminal organizations that violate federal wiretapping laws?
......ah, mine's the duster. With the oilskin finish.
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Thursday 14th February 2008 05:12 GMT Phillip Rhodes
what a load of bollocks
In the United States and in Great Britain, our own government(s) are the biggest threat to our way of life. What's hard to understand is how two lots of people like yanks and brits, both with rich heritages of valuing freedom and liberty (Magna Carta anybody? Declaration of Independence? Thomas Paine and "Common Sense? etc?) have allowed their respective societies to devolve into this near Orwellian state of fascist totalitarianism. I mean, you lot have more surveillance cameras per capita than any nation in the world, right? And both of our governments are trying to implement National ID cards, which should absolutely be anathema to a free society.
Makes one wonder where it's all going to end...
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Thursday 14th February 2008 08:50 GMT Rebecca Putman
I'm surprised...
...that BushCo thinks it can still cry "Wolf!" Don't they realize we don't believe them anymore?
Stupid gits. It only took me about a year after Dumbya took office for me to figure out that I listen to what they say, turn it around 180 degrees, and that'd be the real truth.
If John Edwards hadn't dropped out of the race, I'd be voting for him. Instead I'll vote for... yeah, I'm not tellin'! ;D
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Thursday 14th February 2008 08:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
@ I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects
>> If George Bush died and we were invited to send a turd to to make a pile of shit to bury him in, the fund would be oversubscribed in an hour. <<
It wouldn't take an hour to be over-subscribed... wouldn't even take five minutes... five SECONDS is more like it.
I'm outta here... can't take the hilarity any longer.
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Thursday 14th February 2008 10:15 GMT Spleen
Re: Matt Bryant
Explosives secreted inside condoms and given to a drug mule. Good one. You should work for the security services and help them cook up new elaborate terrorist schemes to "warn the public" about.
We could turn it into a party game. Twenty seconds to come up with a new terror warning, or you pay a forfeit. Let's see... the terrorist drinks one half of a binary explosive and injects the other half into his balls. Once on board the plane he uses the airline toilet, has a piss and then a wank, combining the explosive. Bang.
Too far-fetched? Ok, it is almost certainly chemically and medically impossible (though I think I could still get the FBI or MI5 to believe it, let alone the Daily Mail), but I've got more. Terrorists will hack into satnav systems and recreate the old maths puzzle, so that a lorry carrying nuclear waste, a petrol tanker and a Swan Vesta delivery truck all approach a crossroads at high speed at the same time as another terrorist turns all the lights to green.
We could do this all day. Terrorists will sneak into zoos, cut all the wire fences and inject all the tigers with crack cocaine using a modified tranquiliser gun. Terrorists will save up spare change, then throw whole bagfuls of them off skyscrapers. (Also wouldn't work, but see above.) Terrorists will rise at dawn and string up piano wire coated with poison at neck height along cycle paths.
Now, why is it that according to the media, terrorists have hundreds upon hundreds of options available to them, yet don't seem to take them? Say I was a radical mullah and I had ten jihadist youths in front of me, ready to kill. I wouldn't get them making explosives, which would run the risk of discovery. I would send give them hunting knives and send them to ten different shopping centres across the country, and tell them to get as many people as possible before they were taken down. If you want to create a climate of terror then you need frequent, low-tech and random assaults, to make people think "If I go out, I'm in danger", not elaborate high-profile schemes. Ten attacks killing five people each would be ten times more effective than a single attack killing fifty.
Your supposed terrorist leaders aren't stupid. They know this. So why don't they do it? Because they *don't exist* on any scale large enough to worry about more than whether you'll be struck by lightning. They exist only in the sense that you allow O'Brien to define your reality. There are disturbed youths out there, some of whom may actually make the huge mental leap necessary to stop talking about committing an act of terrorism but actually *do it*, but they are not a significant threat to this country.
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Thursday 14th February 2008 13:39 GMT Matt Bryant
RE: Spleen
I'm amazed! The mental health institutes have a computer that works immersed in sand (along with your head)! Either that or it works rectally (a probable other location for your head). This would be the same terrorists - Al Quaeda - that flew commercial airliners into the Twin Towers, blew up the trains in Madrid, and bombed the London tubes (ah, hold on a sec, you're probably one of them conspiracy idiotists that deny those events ever happened!). I bet you used to ridicule the idea that an AQ attack could ever happen in London/Madrid/wherever.
In your research-free rant, you also forgot that Bin Laden considers himself at war with the Western capitalist machine, hence his attempts to attack it's symbols (such as the World Trade Center) and mechanisms (such as transportation), and especially the workers (hence the attacks on major cities rather than small towns). You may also have noticed (actually, you probably haven't cos you can't see very well from under the sand or up your own arse) that AQ deliberately targets civilians in these attacks, not military installations, is happy to "sacrifice" their operatives in such "matyrdom" missions, always disguises these operatives as civilains, and has pledged to do as many attacks as it can, only it is rather busy trying to hide from the current CIA/MI6/FSB/Guoanbu/just-about-every-secret-service-in-the-world attempts to find and kill them. That is what is currently stopping AQ carrying out more activities in the West.
Whilst you may feel safe in your padded cell with it's sand floor, the rest of us have to live in the real world, which includes the possibility that AQ (or another terrorist organisation) may attempt more suicide bombings against the West, and will not be too shy at using either women or our own sense of fair-play/sensitivities/PCness or just downright idiocy to their advantage.
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Thursday 14th February 2008 13:39 GMT Ian Ferguson
Re: Where did all this anti UnitedStatesandAmericanism come from?
"30 years ago we forgave them Viet Nam. As anybody could make a mistake."
I'm sorry, you've lost me there... who are you speaking on behalf of? As far as I can remember, the Vietnam war was more than a mistake. Most civilised people might be willing to forgive them, once they issue a formal apology, start war crimes proceedings, and begin financial compensation to affected Vietnamese families.
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Thursday 14th February 2008 14:05 GMT Graham Wood
@Matt Bryant
To quote someone after the July bombings in London: "I've been bombed by a better class of bas***d than this lot".
The threat is nowhere near as bad as it is being sold to be. It's a great excuse for the governments involved to get extra controls over their populace in the sake of "defence against these really nasty people".
Speaking as someone that's been within minutes (and/or a couple of hundred metres) of multiple IRA bombs, I "live in the real world", and still think you're talking complete crap.
As for the secret services stopping the attacks - it's your turn to be in cloud cuckoo land. If AQ (and any others) were as organised as you claim then there would be multiple unrelated cells ready to act before such a large operation would be taken. They would be "set loose" to act as appropriate before the increased attention - with the result that there would be no way to trace them from the leadership (or the other way around).
So I suppose what I'm saying is that if the threat really is as bad as you say (which it isn't) then the bodies making these announcements would be a waste of time, along with the announcements. And if it's not, then it's still a complete waste of time. Either way - it's not actually going to change anything... And if they don't actually have any reason for saying it, it's just a complete joke.
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Thursday 14th February 2008 16:28 GMT Jason DePriest
Say what
@ greg and his 72 virgins
You'd prefer just a few experienced girls? The 72 virgins are actually *perpetual* virgins so that even after you deflower them, they are still magically virgins. I don't see the appeal either, but I'm not The Prophet Mohamed PBUH.
@ James and The Hitchiker's Guide
The ship of useless folks from HHGTTG crashed on Earth. Perhaps it's true after all.
@ I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects and America is stinky
It went wrong when corporate interests trumped the safety and security and will of the common people and resulted in the squandering of solidarity of the rest of the world's commitment to us after 9/11. When Bush basically spit on the UN and told many other allies to sod off, they were decidedly miffed. The fact that he admits no wrong-doing and feels his every decision has been the right one only compounds the problem.
Compare "no specific, credible intelligence" with Bruce Schneier's http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/latest_news_on.html, specifically the part where an oil rig is evacuated because someone dreamed of a bomb.
I chose Paris because at this point, she'd be just as effective at running America. Love my country, not so much my leaders.
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Thursday 14th February 2008 20:38 GMT Mark
Re: It's easy to mock.....
That wasn't the reason why they weren't picked up. Mostly because hijacking a plane is illegal and so they'd pick them up for that.
No, the only thing this "new idea" of using a 747 as a weapon did was stop people from acceding to the hijacker demands. Before then, people gave them what they wanted because they would go free. Afterward, a dipstick trying to light his shoelace got the shit kicked out of him. Why? Because what was he going to do to stop them? Kill them more???
It was a one-off shot.
Nevertheless, the forces didn't decide "well, they are only going to hijack the plane, we'll leave them alone". They didn't know they were there (or if they did, they either let 11/9 happen or were incompetent).
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Thursday 14th February 2008 20:38 GMT Robert Moore
@Anonymous Coward 1600 GMT
As a Canadian I am DEEPLY offended to be compaired to the Americans.
Americand are mostly:
Loud
Obnoxious
Ignorant
I hear there are a few exceptions, but I haven't seen them personally.
Don't get me wrong, I love America. There is only one thing wrong with it. Too many Damn Americans.
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Monday 18th February 2008 00:32 GMT Anonymous Coward
Oh, for God's sake...
How many farking people have ever been killed by terrorists, versus how many are killed by the flu every year? Come on, people, get a grip. Terror threats serve one purpose, which is to keep the population scared. That lets the government work its will with almost no opposition, because it's "security".
I accidentally smuggled a set of knife blades *twice* on airplanes, before I realized they were in my hand luggage. I was subjected to careful searches, including my shoes. But my handheld case went through the X-ray machine both times without any comment. Oh, I feel real safe.
It's a dog and pony show to keep people scared and make them more malleable. The US is dying from all the crap it eats, drinks, and smokes, yet the focus is on "terrorists" who have barely done any harm by comparison. By all rights, fast food restaurants should be raided, their food confiscated as WMD, and their personnel taken to Guantanamo for waterboarding.
This topic is closed for new posts.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
