Monday, January 11, 2010

THEATER OF THE ABSURD: THE DETROIT UNDERPANTS "BOMBER" AND PARANOID OVER-REACTION

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY RICK SALUTIN IN TORONTO'S GLOBE AND MAIL

The gigantic, costly over-reaction to this event is like theatre of the absurd.

A mentally unbalanced man from Nigeria with a pathetic firework squib of a bomb, about the size of a "lite-days" sanitary pad, sewn into his underpants.

If he said he was in contact with Napoleon or Hitler, his words would not even been reported, but he said, or it is claimed he said, al Qaeda.

Whoa, deadly stuff: the Arab word for toilet which a former British Foreign Secretary has already told us does not exist, being just a collective term for Muslim extremists.

We have not even been given a clear understanding of what this tiny pouch of powder in his underpants was, but no explosive of that size in that location could ever bring down a plane.

In any event those passengers were never in serious danger, except perhaps the man's seat mate getting his/her leg burned too.

So what's the answer to this deadly, deadly threat?

Why, bomb the crap out of the poor people of Yemen, of course.

That's the American way.

Oh, and demand everyone in the world buy expensive scanners from an American company.

And I wonder how many readers know that before this incident, the US was bombing people in Yemen?

Makes sense to me.

Just about as much sense as burning witches.