As IF Times

link Men Held By Dutch Said to Be Unlikely to Plot Attack Update1 – Bloomberg.com.

It’s all a misunderstanding.  The circumstantial evidence is something you’d find in a Seinfeld episode.  Two Yemeni men, both on FBI databases hop on board planes to Amsterdam.  Purely by coincidence, their luggage is found to contain cellphones taped to a Pepto Bismol bottle.  “Officer, I can explain…”  In addition, watches strapped together along with numerous knives and box cutters were dismissed as ‘no evidence’ of any terrorist intents.  Luckily for our heroes, the map of Amsterdam with an X marking a spot labelled ‘kaboom’ was left inadvertently at a McDonald’s before they boarded. 

Also luckily, our heroes were not caught wearing dangerous items like belt buckles, wedding rings, coins, prosthetic limbs or wheelchairs which are all high on the dangerous items list of airport screeners.  Pepto Bismol bottles with cellphones strapped to them are so much more benign, how else do people transport them?  In fact, this is probably the best way to get bottles of shampoo or contact lens fluids through the checkpoints.  “It’s ok Joe, there’s a cellphone strapped to the bottle, it’s all fine…Just to be sure though, check the grandmother for rings and pendants…and her walker too…”

link SUV crashes into departure level at YVR – Headlines – News – News1130 – ALL NEWS RADIO

In 1993, the World Trade Center was attacked deliberately by terrorists who detonated explosives packed into the trunk of a vehicle parked in the basement parkade of the towers. Although a few deaths and injuries occurred, damage to the structures was contained and subsequently repaired.

Fast forward to September of 2001 and this time, the terrorists succeeded by hurtling entire aircraft into the towers resulting in mayhem, death, destruction and led to a controversial war. In December of that same year, the idiot Richard Reid was thwarted in his attempt to light a fuse on his shoe while on an American Airlines flight from Paris.

For the past 8 years, millions if not hundreds of millions of air travellers have been forced to de-shoe their tootsies while going through airport security because of this idiot. This precaution must work because there have been a total of zero, zip, nada, none, goose egg incidents of this kind in the past 8 years. Not only that, there has not been even a reported attempt at this type of high tech shenanigan again. Frankly, to expect a repeat of this action is an insult both to terrorists as well as the rest of us.

Luckily, the fuse was on his shoe not in his underwear, or we’d see separate his and her security lines at the airport today. Oddly, we are still on guard against people with flammable shoes, but not on guard for vehicles packed with explosives driving into buildings. Wouldn’t it be easier to circulate in the general community hatching up car bombs than to stand in line at airports subject to the beady eyed scrutiny of security personnel?

The story in the link above caused me to think that although it was apparently an accident caused by a bad driver, ( hey this is Vancouver) such an incident could have been planned with malevolent intent by bad people.

“Well sure,” some would argue, “you can’t check every car that goes near a building” and this is true. But neither is it likely that future troublemakers will re-do the shoe thing again. Heck, it’s probably just as easy to glue some explosives in someone’s toupee or hat or turban or glass eye or denture plate. Diabolical minds will think of all kinds of creative ways to cause havoc. People have been conned to think this is a security measure which is implemented for their protection. It appears more likely this is bureaucratic measure that’s long past its usefulness, but which cannot find someone with the balls to push for its abolition. This has everything to do with PC again. Since no one wants to isolate or ‘profile’ individuals, far better to inconvenience everyone.

Again, it’s a puzzle to me why people, civilians and politicians, allow the on-going erosion of little dignities which characterize life in the so called free world. See previous post on global stupidity.