Geek woman news story of possible interest...

Wed Sep 26 00:07:27 UTC 2007

On 9/25/07, Colin McGregor <colinmc151-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> --- Evan Leibovitch <evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> > Funny how the airline you'd figure to be the one
> > most attacked --
> > Israel's El Al -- is also the most secure (no
> > successful hits or
> > hijackings yet). Its planes are equipped with
> > anti-missile  defence.
> > Security of this kind is possible on all airlines if
> > the will exists,
> > just like high standards of maintenance.
>
> Not true. July 23, 1968 El Al had its first (and to
> date ONLY) successful hijacking (of a flight from
> Rome, Italy, to Lod, Israel, the flight ended up in
> Algiers). Since then El Al has poured a massive amount
> of money in to making sure what happened in 1968
> doesn't happen again... There in is part of the issue,
> how much money is safety worth, El Al's answer has
> been "a lot", other airlines the answer being "not
> quite as much"...

Evan provbably had in mind that there were no successfull terrorists
attacks on El-Al. However, I would not  believe myself that Israelian
El-Al is most secure, regardless all weapons they may have on board.

In 1992, or 1992, or may be 1993 I saw by myself, together with my
wife, how El-Al plain desintegrates over Amsterdam, 300 meters in
straight from the place we lived. It was a cargo plane, had just 5
people on board and, probably, a huge load of chemicals used for
producing weapons, transported from USA. And, of course, it was fully
loaded with fuel, just after taking off from Amsterdam Schipholl
airport. It was Boeining 747. It "landed" with the top at bottom and
bottom at top, striking 2 eleven floor buildings, and killing there
instantly at least around 40-50 people. Next day the Netherland police
had really no access to the place. They just protect that nobody
enters the terrain. Instead, they waited for experts from Israel...

zb.

>
> > > Suspicious of liquids on board?  Blame that
> > British terrorist who tried to
> > > detonate his shoes.  Ludicrous sounding, but cabin
> > fires can spread rather
> > > quickly and are notoriously difficult to
> > extinguish.  See the Swissair
> > > disaster, or a similar one involving an Air Canada
> > DC-9.
> > >
> > More fearmongering. It's quite telling that you have
> > to go back so far
> > in time for an example that Air Canada was still
> > flying DC-9s (it was
> > 1983, for anyone actually tracking facts). The
> > Swissair flight was a
> > DC-10, an aircraft no longer made and used by only a
> > handful of major
> > airlines. New aircraft are far more fire-resistant
> > than ever.
> >
> > In any case, the debating tactic of connecting shoe
> > bomb to cabin fires
> > is not very useful here.
> >
> > > Bomb a train, you tie up the line for a few hours
> > and kill some of the people
> > > in the compartment, which may be as few as 10
> > people.
> > So when talking about aircraft you say "as much as"
> > and about other
> > modes, "as few as"... what kind of crap is that?
> > Airplanes can go
> > airborne with "as few as 10 people" and _current_
> > trains can easily
> > carry more than 500. Derail a high-speed train and
> > you _do_ get deaths.
> >
> > > Bomb a train station or airport terminal, and
> > you'll get a handful of souls if that.
> > Spoken by someone who's never had to endure a
> > passenger terminal at its
> > peak. Consider that all of those air passengers had
> > to stand in line to
> > check in. Visit Terminal 1 at about 7pm most nights
> > (most European
> > flights leave early evening) and talk about a
> > 'handful of souls'... what
> > rubbish.
> >
> > > Detonate a  truck bomb (say, the size of the one
> > Timothy McVeigh used) in the middle of a
> > > span of the Boor Viaduct and you'd disrupt life in
> > Toronto for days, weeks,
> > > maybe months
> > So the Bloor Viadict is a poor target. There are
> > others. It should be
> > noted that McVeigh did his damage using a truck as a
> > delivery vehicle
> > and the target was a regular office building.
> >
> > > Hijack a typical ship, even an oil tanker, and
> > congratulations you have a large, slowly-moving,
> > use-once-and-discard battering ram - we don't send
> > many ships with Mount
> > > Blanc's cargo of munitions from Point A to Point B
> > much anymore, as World War
> > > I ended some time ago.
> > >
> > Many of the newest superships are equipped with more
> > than 3,500 berths
> > (talk about sitting ducks!), not to mention lots of
> > people who slept
> > through the lifeboat drill.
> >
> > Even better targets (should one be looking) are
> > overcrowded ferries,
> > which sail with hundreds of people and often
> > miserable safety
> > facilities. A fatal accident on one of those
> > happened as recently as a
> > month ago in Egypt, and another in Sierra Leone
> > killed about 150.
>
> Well, New York City operates a number of ferries
> between the city and Staten Island. The largest two
> ferries are rated for up to 6,000 passengers (mind
> you, how often those two ferries travel at (or near)
> their limit may be a very different question).
>
> Now, I don't know what the softest of soft targets is
> (quite frankly I probably don't want want to know).
>
> What I do know is that the technology required to
> knock down an airline in flight while it clearly
> exists in terrorist hands (a small plane and a trained
> pilot with a death wish would do), there are far
> softer targets that a nutbar with a cause could hit.
> This was shown by  Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols
> who with a rented truck fertilizer and fuel oil showed
> that loonies with a cause could cause mass havoc...
>
> > > So yes, if you want to do spectacular damage,
> > aircraft remain our civilization's biggest soft
> > spot.
> > >
> > Absolute BS. The paranoia about planes comes more
> > from human
> > claustrophobia and helplessness while in the air
> > than anything else.
> > Certainly not fact.
> >
> > > And people doing crazy things
> > ...like claiming that flying kills more people than
> > driving. You
> > probably thought that "Snakes on a Plane" was based
> > on a true story.
> >
> > OTOH, facts can be your friends...
> >
> >
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/travel/reports/03092000/TINFO.html
> > http://www.umich.edu/~urecord/0203/Jan20_03/18.shtml
> >
> http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/16237
> >
> > - Evan
> >
> > --
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