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Apparently the suspect is in custody. Nothing official but sounds like investigators suspect more than one. Oh, and he's from Pakistan.

Glad they caught the guy. Hopefully he'll squeel on his co-conspirators.

Frazzled wrote:

BaronIveagh wrote:*sigh* Never, EVER fly out of an airport in the state you're wanted in. Drive. Canada is an hour away and they wouldn't have been looking for him there.

I'm sure they had alerts on the border as well.
Pakistani. Yep.

Anyone notice the bomb was next to viacom. South Park...threats...mmm.

If right next to means a block away and clearly not threatening too. I doubt they're connected.

BaronIveagh wrote:Simple cell structure. If one cell is compromised, the damage is limited because one group has no idea who the other groups are, or what they're doing. Makes it hard to take down.

"I can't feel my legs...Keyser."

Frazzled wrote:

BaronIveagh wrote:*sigh* Never, EVER fly out of an airport in the state you're wanted in. Drive. Canada is an hour away and they wouldn't have been looking for him there.

I'm sure they had alerts on the border as well.
Pakistani. Yep.

NY boarder is even more porous then the Texas boarder. Further, if he'd crossed the boarder with a bunch of Native Americans, they would have given him a very perfunctory search (and probably not realized he was Pakistani), since we can cross the US Canadian boarder with a wide variety of things that most people can't, so the boarder patrol rarely bothers to look.

Or just swim the Niagara river. It's cold, but poorly patrolled.

@Shuma: I'm just ignoring you from now on. Attempting to explain my relationship with terrorism would be a waste of time and keystrokes explaining everything to you. Let's just say that I know some things about it and leave it at that.

Well, as noted, we are dealing Cobra Commander here.

What worries me are the plots not done by Cobra Commander, but the guys that successfully implemented the 9/11 and embassy bombings.

I don't think we'll see it come from Al-Qaeda, at this point. We're more likely to see the next one internal to the US, considering how volatile internal politics is getting.

The Baron will make a prediction:

The next 'real' terrorist attack (one with significant property damage and/or loss of life)will be politically motivated and come from within.

While we hardly lack for enemies abroad, most of them don't have any teeth. They realize that the US army will come down on their countries like a bag of hammers, and for all thier posturing, most are more concerned with thier own wellbeing. There are only two types of foe that we need to worry about, those who have no country, and those that are inside our own country.


ATM: there's relative peace in Ireland. Hamas and Israel would rather kill one another. Any solid threat from Al-Qaeda is pretty much a thing of the past if they're down to people like the ones in NY. We're not involved in Chechnya or any of the African conflicts (officially). China isn't saying a word about the Uighurs and Tibetans, but that's not news, and we support both those groups anyway.

So what does that leave us? Some nut who's heard too much of Rush/Olbermann/Farrakhan deciding to 'do something about it".

BaronIveagh wrote:I

ATM: there's relative peace in Ireland. Hamas and Israel would rather kill one another. Any solid threat from Al-Qaeda is pretty much a thing of the past if they're down to people like the ones in NY. We're not involved in Chechnya or any of the African conflicts (officially). China isn't saying a word about the Uighurs and Tibetans, but that's not news, and we support both those groups anyway.

You can make that argument 9/10 and pre embassy bombings as well though, and we were still attacked.

Didn't Bush pull most of our military presence, etc. out of Saudi Arabia, though? IIRC, that was one of the things that had set off OBL. I'm sure he can find another excuse, mind you. But I thought it was our infidel presence that was at the root of his issues with us.

Granted, at the time, Al-Qaeda was a relative unknown in the area of international terrorism, too, having not too long before been our ally in the Russians war in Afghanistan.

I'll admit, that it's always possible that a heretofore unknown enemy might attack us. Hell, the leader of the Boston bowling association might fly off the handle having lost his house to a banking scandal and decide to blow one up.

I was looking at it from the view of enemies we know about. There's always the chance that a random person will fly off the handle, or we'll do something stupid to slot off a former ally.

@Shuma: I'm just ignoring you from now on. Attempting to explain my relationship with terrorism would be a waste of time and keystrokes explaining everything to you. Let's just say that I know some things about it and leave it at that.

I guess it's my loss having another dimestore anarchist ignoring me, but what praytell is your relationship with terrorism?

Go ask the FBI. I'm not admitting to anything other then then being on the tiger team that breached security at Langley a few years back. And they paid us about 30k a head for that one, which wasn't a bad afternoons work.

BaronIveagh wrote:Go ask the FBI. I'm not admitting to anything other then then being on the tiger team that breached security at Langley a few years back. And they paid us about 30k a head for that one, which wasn't a bad afternoons work.

I like to tell people I own a yacht sometimes.

... I have the feeling I could post a dozen pics of it and my bank statement and you'd just claim 'shopped!'.

So piss off.

(and he's now on 'ignore'.)

Self portrait.

I kicked Supermans ass...

Wrexasaur wrote:Self portrait.

I kicked Supermans ass...

That looks shopped.

gorgon wrote:Didn't Bush pull most of our military presence, etc. out of Saudi Arabia, though? IIRC, that was one of the things that had set off OBL. I'm sure he can find another excuse, mind you. But I thought it was our infidel presence that was at the root of his issues with us.

Yes, our military footprint in Saudi Arabia is now very small. It was redundant after we took control of Iraq, as its primary purpose was the protection of Saudi Arabia from Iraq. It was also a root cause for bin Laden's hatred of the US.

Terrorists are dumb. All they try and do is blow stuff up. I had an American friend who challenged to come up with a better plan once to cause havoc. In the space of ten minutes, I came up with:

-Breaking into the water stations, and poisoning the water supply.
-Setting off explosive charges on oil tankers as they move up and down the coast, to create economic/enviromental damage.
-Hacking the traffic lights in major cities to cause mass accidents.
-Systematically co-ordinating explosions on widely used rail tracks, as trains go over them.

and several more.

You'd think they'd have moved past the 'set a bomb' stage by now. It's almost pathetic they're so hard up for new ideas.

BaronIveagh wrote:Granted, at the time, Al-Qaeda was a relative unknown in the area of international terrorism, too, having not too long before been our ally in the Russians war in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda didn't exist when the Russians were present in Afghanistan, it was formed just after that conflict, and gradually transitioned into the cellular structure we see today; eventually being enabled by internet communication. That is, among other reasons, why its such a problematic beast. We're dealing with a series of formerly independent organizations, formed together in Afghanistan, that now operate in a lose network of cells; each one having its own ever expanding web of connections.

Its not really sensible to look at the groups that spawned Al-Qaeda, as similar to the organization that is Al-Qaeda. We did that of course, but it was quite stupid. Though simply recognizing a threat isn't going to prevent that threat from causing injury. The embassy bombings et al were the products of reasonable security expectations vis a vis deployment costs, and political goals.

BaronIveagh wrote:
I'll admit, that it's always possible that a heretofore unknown enemy might attack us. Hell, the leader of the Boston bowling association might fly off the handle having lost his house to a banking scandal and decide to blow one up.

The advantage of a networked organization is that its agents, if they can even be called that, can come from nearly everywhere.

BaronIveagh wrote:
I was looking at it from the view of enemies we know about. There's always the chance that a random person will fly off the handle, or we'll do something stupid to slot off a former ally.

Networks are random by nature, that's why they're so dangerous.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ketara wrote:Terrorists are dumb. All they try and do is blow stuff up. I had an American friend who challenged to come up with a better plan once to cause havoc. In the space of ten minutes, I came up with:

-Breaking into the water stations, and poisoning the water supply.
-Setting off explosive charges on oil tankers as they move up and down the coast, to create economic/enviromental damage.
-Hacking the traffic lights in major cities to cause mass accidents.
-Systematically co-ordinating explosions on widely used rail tracks, as trains go over them.

and several more.

You'd think they'd have moved past the 'set a bomb' stage by now. It's almost pathetic they're so hard up for new ideas.

One of the limitations of a network organization is that there is very little support from other members of the network. They'll push you to action, but by the very nature of internet communication (public accessibility, distance between individuals) are prevented from providing the physical support necessary to carry out large scale attacks. That barrier to physical organization is what prevents most major incidents from taking place. Obviously, as they've happened before, they aren't impossible to orchestrate, just harder than one might think.

BaronIveagh wrote:... I have the feeling I could post a dozen pics of it and my bank statement and you'd just claim 'shopped!'.

So piss off.

(and he's now on 'ignore'.)

Anyone can fake a bank statement these days.

The point you made is exactly the kind of totally unverifiable claim that Internet Tough Guys are likely to make on forums to support their arguments.

I'm not saying you're a liar. I don't know anything either way.

That's why your statement has to be discounted, because no-one has any way to determine the truth.

What if I claim to be President Obama, dictating my posts to an English butler to get the idiom and spelling.

I'm Jason Bourne, but now I have wiener dogs who are enforcers.

A week ago I met Elvis. he wishes everyone well, but was ranting that JFK was actually alive..and black.

I'm actually Russel Crowe. I only made that movie A Beautiful Mind because I wanted other players to think I was smart enough for 40k. Well, that and the paycheck.

Seriously though, I have a yacht.

I have a statue of a deep sea diver on my desk. If you look carefully one of the hoses isn't connected so all his air would be rushing out and water filling his helmet....

Kilkrazy wrote:

BaronIveagh wrote:... I have the feeling I could post a dozen pics of it and my bank statement and you'd just claim 'shopped!'.

So piss off.

(and he's now on 'ignore'.)

Anyone can fake a bank statement these days.

The point you made is exactly the kind of totally unverifiable claim that Internet Tough Guys are likely to make on forums to support their arguments.

I'm not saying you're a liar. I don't know anything either way.

That's why your statement has to be discounted, because no-one has any way to determine the truth.

What if I claim to be President Obama, dictating my posts to an English butler to get the idiom and spelling.

Ok, valid point.

At the time, there was a Civil War exhibit going on at the park across from it. Basically we dressed up as union soldiers, and played lost. There had been enough genuine incidents of that it didn't trip any alarms. It wasn't a wild commando raid like most people would picture, we basically conned the guards they sent out. Once we were inside the perimeter, we made the call, and let them know that we had gotten the armed men inside.

Well, seeing that the media is basically giving a breakdown on how to make the best bomb possible on the news because of this, I laugh.

We'll be bombed soon enough because of fething idiots in the media industry.

"He did it wrong, here's how you REALLY blow up NYC.

The Daily Show did a funny bit about this.

Don't worry, if reporters are writing it, then it will be wrong. The phrase clueless comes to mind.

Give an idiot a length of det cord, and he'll blow himself up. Show an idiot how to make their own explosives, and they'll still blow themselves up.

ShumaGorath wrote:

BaronIveagh wrote:So Joseph Mengele, Vlad Tepes, Erzsébet Báthory, Nicolae Ceauşescu, François Duvalier, and Slobodan Milošević were all fictional?

Virtually all there were given power via political appointment or rank. About the only supervillain like that I can think of out of hand is doctor doom, and he's a gypsy sorcerer superscientist. It's also entirely disimilar from what you are proposing and none of them are what I would classify as a supervillain.

Even though I know you're just being a pain in the ass on purpose...

Al Capone, John Gotti, Osama Bin Laden... Also, your idea that being a "super-villain" is contingent on not ever being killed or captured or whatever is silly. They all end up in some sort of unpleasantness.

There's also these guys.

http://www.cracked.com/article_16611_5-real-world-criminals-who-were-certified-super-villains.html

Too bad the guy with the killdozer wasn't a better driver...

I'll toss in John Dillanger, Captain William Kidd, Pretty Boy Floyd, Edward England, Baby Face Nelson, Calico Jack Rackham, Jesse James, Ned Kelly (armored bandits! who'da thunk?), Billy the Kid, and one Captain Edward Teach, AKA Blackbeard, who held the City of Charleston ransom.

And for escaping and never being killed? Henry Morgan, who burned Panama City, and sacked half the Caribbean.