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Yeah, it's preseason and I've been doing this Seahawks fan thing for nearly 24-years, so I'm used to it. Nothing new here. Yet, 'tis the season for proselystizing and making new fans. What better time to do it than during the preseason just months after the 'Hawks made it to the Super Bowl for the first time in franchise history? My wife is not quite there yet. She still thinks there are two seasons: Football Season and Her Season.
One person I've successfully converted to the Rebel Alliance is my 4-year-old nephew. That was no small feat. The odds were stacked against it: His father is a Steelers fan and they live in Denver. Somehow (divine intervention can be the only answer), my influence was able to take root in his heart and a lifelong devotion to the Seahawks is almost complete.
He now stops me in midsentence while speaking on the phone and asks, "Wait. Are you for the Seahawks or the Steelers?" When assured of my commitment to the 'Hawks he answers with an approving, "Good." But that's not it.
I was recently told he stood up in a restaurant in Denver and, with all his might, yelled, "Yaaaaay Seahawks! Boooo Broncos!" Not only is he fan, he's a fan with brass cojones - at 4, nonetheless. (sniff, sniif) It's enough to make one the proudest uncle in the world.
Game on!
Some Arabs are safe.
Two stories, one from the Daily Mail, one from from No More Mr. Nice Blog.
Mutiny as passengers refuse to fly until Asians are removed
Passengers refuse to allow holiday jet to take off until two Asian men are thrown off plane
By CHRISTOPHER LEAKE and ANDREW CHAPMAN 12:08pm 20th August 2006
British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.
The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.
Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.
The incident fuels the row over airport security following the arrest of more than 20 people allegedly planning the suicide-bombing of transatlantic jets from the UK to America. It comes amid growing demands for passenger-profiling and selective security checks.
It also raised fears that more travellers will take the law into their own hands - effectively conducting their own 'passenger profiles'.
The passenger revolt came as Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary was accused of using the terror crisis to make money. Government sources say he boasted to an official at the Transport Department: "Every time I appear on TV, I get a spike in sales."
The Tories said the Government's failure to reassure travellers had led the Malaga passengers to 'behave irrationally' and 'hand a victory to terrorists'.
Websites used by pilots and cabin crew were yesterday reporting further incidents. In one, two British women with young children on another flight from Spain complained about flying with a bearded Muslim even though he had been security-checked twice before boarding
.........................
Friday, August 18, 2006
Wow, this really seems to be out of control -- citing a story in the Winninpeg Free Press, a poster at Democratic Underground tells us this:
3 Doctors returning to Winnipeg on a connecting flight from Denver were forced off their flight earlier this week. One was Muslim. All were dark skinned.
A passenger in front of them who was drunk at the time, claimed he heard one of them state "I have control of the aisle now" They were then questioned by the FBI and TSA security let them go shortly after checking things out. However they missed their flight and still had to overnight in Denver because their ordeal with no compensation. These passengers want a full investigation through the government on this....
I can't read the full story -- the firewall for non-subscribers at the Free Press is like the old Berlin Wall -- but a search yields the start of the story:
MDs forced off plane
THREE young Winnipeg doctors -- one a Muslim -- were kicked off a flight home from Denver earlier this week after a passenger falsely identified them as a terrorist threat. Dr. Ahmed Farooq, a fourth-year radiology resident, and two physician friends want an apology from United Airlines and assurances staff will be better trained to identify genuine threats. Winnipeg Centre MP Pat Martin has also asked federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day to raise the issue with his counterpart in Washington. "It's the most egregious example of this device of racial profiling I know about among my constituents," said Martin. "These are valuable, upstanding members of our society. Civil rights shouldn't be collateral damage in this whole fight against terrorism." But officials with United Airlines say they are obliged to take any allegations threatening passenger safety seriously, particularly in a period of heightened tension like the one following last week's discovery of a British terrorist plot targeting transatlantic ...
I get that when I search "doctors" and when I search "drunk" -- so I suspect the DU summary is accurate.
If it is, that's just wonderful -- we now take the word of a drunk over the word of three doctors, if one of the doctors is a dirty filthy Mooooslim.
(There's also a brief Toronto Sun story here. The Sun says they were returning from San Francisco, where they'd been taking a course.)
You know what? That plot in England is referred to as a "failed plot," but it's not a "failed plot." Those guys succeeded. They've got us chasing our tails and running around half-crazy. They've got us pissing off law-abiding Muslims like this doctor, which has a ripple effect -- to younger Muslims in Canada and the U.S. and Europe, every story like this is one more sign that we hate all of them. The British plot worked like a charm.
Which is ironic, because, as this grimly funny and wonderfully detailed article makes clear, the plot as we've had it described to us -- a plot to mix TATP in flight -- was virtually impossible to pull off.
Either the plotters had no idea what long odds they faced, which means they're dumber than we realize, or they knew and didn't care, because their real bomb was a fear bomb -- which hit the center of its target.
Or, worse, they really were stupid, and they got us anyway.
****
Right-wingers would surely respond to the above by pointing to this:
Two suitcases containing bottles of gasoline, propane gas and a detonating device that were found abandoned in German regional trains last month were bombs primed to go off and kill a "high number'' of people, police said....
A suitcase found abandoned on a regional train from Aachen to Hamm in western Germany was turned in by the train's conductor in Dortmund. It contained a propane gas bottle, three bottles filled with gasoline and a detonating device, the Federal Prosecutor's Office said Aug. 1. On the same day another piece of luggage was found on another regional train from Moenchengladbach to Koblenz about 75 miles to the South. It too contained a propane gas bottle....
But watching for unattended packages on public transportation is smart. Forcing doctors on their way home from taking a course to deplane on the word of a drunk? Not so smart.Somewhere, Osama is laughing.
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