Whatever you do, don't Twitter about blowing up an airport!

If I'm not mistaken, joking about blowing up an airplane has always resulted in grief.  I know we can certainly say "Oh, look, he's a nice young man who surely wasn't about to blow up any airports" but at the same time, he couldn't see something like this as a possibility?  Where has he been living since 2001 that he wouldn't know that people don't find threats like this funny anymore the way maybe they used to?

Here's a tip for him, for the future:  if a broken packet of Splenda is leaking out of your carry-on, say "that's just Splenda".  [i]Don't[/i] say "that's Anthrax, and now you have mere hours to live!!!"  Little nuances of communication like that can make all the difference.

Snert wrote:

Here's a tip for him, for the future:  if a broken packet of Splenda is leaking out of your carry-on, say "that's just Splenda".  [i]Don't[/i] say "that's Anthrax, and now you have mere hours to live!!!"  Little nuances of communication like that can make all the difference.

:)  Quite right, Snert.  It's got nothing to do with 2001.  This guy was treated appropriately, in my humble opinion. 

Got anything to declare?  "Just this bomb" --> bad news.

The guy's a fucking idiot.

ETA:  Michelle, I just read your post.  From now on, I'll just say "ditto."

Tweet rage? It's the new new thing.

 

Not the same thing, but some people do and say stupid things when they're actually in the situation, just because they're nervous. They're in line for security check, and they're thinking hard to themselves, "Don't make a bomb joke. Don't make a bomb joke." So then a bomb joke just falls out of their mouths. It's like "Don't talk about the war." (See Fawlty Towers.)

I'm trying to imagine the reaction if I decided to vent my frustration with a bank, motor vehicle licensing people, hospital, etc, using this young man's technique...  I can't see it going well.  It's not just airports. 

Rule of thumb:  Don't threaten to blow things up unless you're in a movie with Bruce Willis.  Or maybe Al Pacino.  Then it's okay.

So now idiots making impotent, macho threats online should be charged under the Terrorism Act? IANAL, but what happened to public nuisance charges? Just because we think this man is an idiot and deserves to be arrested doesn't mean we should be cheerleading the draconian arm of the state. Conspiracy? Terrorism? Really? Are these words so meaningless now?

Fidel wrote:

I don't care what they say, Guy Fawkes is still a champion imo. They should burn Henry the Eighth and Maggie in effigy instead.

 

One of my favourite movies is a Guy Fawkes thing set in the future: V for Vendetta (2005)

Bacchus wrote:

There are signs at Pearson saying do not make jokes about bombs and that it is illegal and has been for years before 9/11

 

Yes -- there was an MP who was arrested and charged in Ottawa a few years before 9/11 because he made a bomb joke at the airport there, on his way home to his constituency. Forget who that was -- he struck me as a nice guy who was probably just making either a limp or a nervous joke. I used to be so scared that my husband would do the same thing -- he was perfectly capable of it, and the situation almost provokes it.

 

Some of this reeks to me so intensely of the bourgeois proprieties, and worse. Sooner or later, people are going to start rebelling at being controlled so stupidly, for no obvious benefit.

Snert, when was the last time you were in a theatre that was plastered with signs that said, "Whatever you do while you're here, DO NOT SHOUT FIRE!" -- ???

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Snert, when was the last time you were in a theatre that was plastered with signs that said, "Whatever you do while you're here, DO NOT SHOUT FIRE!" -- ???

 

Never. I'm expected to just know better.

 

Why?

Snert wrote:

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Snert, when was the last time you were in a theatre that was plastered with signs that said, "Whatever you do while you're here, DO NOT SHOUT FIRE!" -- ???

 

Never. I'm expected to just know better.

 

Why?

 

So why aren't you just expected to know better in an airport?

 

I'm just following up on my Fawlty Towers theme. If you make people self-conscious beyond a bearable point, they will begin to emit things. They may spout off. They may fart. They may cry or faint.

 

It is not civilized, what we are doing in our airports. We don't do it in our theatres, even though there have been horrible terrorist incidents in theatres, one in very recent memory.

Good point about the "terrorism" thing - that is kind of ridiculous.  That said, saying "Look, a fire!" is different than saying, "I'm going to bomb the airport."  One is a threat, the other is a lie.

They have the signs in the airport because enough people have made the joke and then claimed they had no idea that was something they shouldn't do.

The majority of rule signs exist because of the minor percentage of idiots who do things that are dangerous, ill-advised and antisocial and then claim ignorance.

Catchfire wrote:

Hee. And I wonder if you'd get thrown in solitary for 40 days without charge if you did...

Further to my post above to skdadl, the punishment is usually 24 hours in an isolation cell without food or cigarettes.  Plus an assful of Loxapine.  Personally, I think 40 days in solitary is for pussies.

Snert wrote:

I'm reminded of a Kids in the Hall skit, in which Kevin McDonald is cautioned "Don't put salt in your eye!". He begins to repeat this to himself over and over until — whoops! — he drops the "don't", at which point he's repeating "put salt in your eye, put salt in your eye". And then of course he dumps out a salt shaker and grinds the salt into his eye.

I once had a borderline ineffective riding coach who claimed that saying to yourself "Don't Stop" was interpreted by your brain as "Stop."  Apparently, your subconscious can't register negatives (or something like that).  She may have had a point -- I turned a $10,000 show jumper into a stopper so clearly her theory still stands.

Michelle wrote:

Good point about the "terrorism" thing - that is kind of ridiculous.  That said, saying "Look, a fire!" is different than saying, "I'm going to bomb the airport."  One is a threat, the other is a lie.

Right, but as Snert advises us, let's have a bit of perspective--this is a guy who is tweeting fer crissakes, about bombing an airport because a runway is closed. Does that sound like terrorism to you? Or in any way a "credible threat"? It doesn't to me, and I'll bet it doesn't to the "authorities" either. Here's what I think, and it's a modulation on skdadl's Fawlty Tower's theme: actions like these, when security auhtorities throw up their hands and say "look, we told you, we have no choice to follow through to the hilt on any and all miniscule threats," it's part of the overarching mechanism that normalizes the state's draconian surveillence and coercion of its people. We've already got people saying in this thread, that this guy deserves to be charged under conspiracy and terror charges because he is a loose-lipped moron. Is this what wrist-slapping looks like now?

If this is what our baseline looks like, what happens up the food chain?

Catchfire, are you saying we don't need any heightened security measures?  I know some of the airline stuff is just stupid (no tweezers, knitting needles) and is mostly busy work to make us feel that we're taking charge of the problem but, really, why can't we run airlines like El Al?  As far as I know, they've never had a problem. 

This is nothing like yelling fire in a theatre. It's like yelling fire in your own home and having the theatre ban you for life and the cops charge you as a terrorist.

It should also be pointed out that the benefit of the doubt is given to this mild-mannered, fair skinned Brit. Had he been someone else I'm sure that the media, airport and cops would have painted him as something much scarier than an idiot that needs to be made an example of.

 

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One of my favourite movies is a Guy Fawkes thing set in the future: V for Vendetta (2005)

The movie is actaully a poor rendition of the comic book series by Allen Moore. If you liked the movie, the book will blow your mind. The difference between V and Guy Fawkes is that Fawkes was a mercenary in the pay of the Catholic establishment, V is an anarchist super hero.

But they don't care if it was a threat.  They're charging him with creating a hoax.  Which more or less if he is found guilty, he's being punished simply for creating the fear that something may happen.  In less generous terms he's being jailed for running his mouth in a manner deemed publicly unacceptable.

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Which more or less if he is found guilty, he's being punished simply for creating the fear that something may happen. 

 

Isn't that kind of exactly what a threat is?

Touche, I suppose I should I written more clearly.  It seems to me they're charging him for creating an empty threat.  Nit picking but when you're dealing with the law it often helps to do so.  The language you used

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Isn't that really where his threat, and whether it was actual or just "a joke" is supposed to be determined?

in asking if the threat was actual seems to imply that the authorities care if there may have been some actual danger behind the threat.

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I think that searching for a definition of "threat" in the current political climate would be difficult.

 

A perfect definition? Perhaps. But I don't think a definition of "threat" needs to be perfect to include people publicly saying that they're going to blow something up.

 

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The term is used quite loosley to mean anything really that people in power need to stop.

 

If those shadowy "people in power" want to stop people from blowing things up because they're all frustrated and stuff, I'm OK with that. That's just the sort of thing I want the "people in power" to do!

Actually, no.  I complain about airport stuff frequently, and I've never had a problem.  It's how you do it.  What the guy did was unreasonable (I'm assuming the airport doesn't close down for frivolous reasons) and his method was antisocial.  He deserves a smack upside the head.  Maybe not via anti-terrorism legislation, but any defense for his actions is damned thin.

When you say Air Canada tried to arrest you for complaining about baggage delays, I suspect there was more to the story.  When I do it, they give me free stuff.

I tell you a personal story and you tell me it is not true 

 

Nuanced version of I don't belive you

 

So Michelle how does one determine the gender of the person posting.  

Yes I escalated the insult but I didn't know I would be insultiong a lady