I think it's well past time that we started arresting anyone found on an airplane with an in-flight magazine.
Or a pen! Just imagine, a few hasty scrawls and a whole planeload of people are stuck in Davenport. Not to mention its potential as a stabbing instrument...
This, of course, is why the Islamic terrorists won't win; they're stuck somewhere in the 9th century.
Terrorists living in the 21st century would read stories like this, think "Denial of Service attack", and have their troops in full force across the country writing Arabic or Farsi in planes, trains, ships, movie theaters and anywhere else they could think of.
It's sad that this reduces not to a contest between the stupid and the smart, but between the stupid and the very marginally less stupid.
That assumes we understand their motivations. If I had to guess, I'd say that what they really want isn't any particular political state of affairs, but shocking carnage and destruction. They seem more theatrical than tactical in their planning.
Terrorists living in the 21st century would read stories like this, think "Denial of Service attack", and have their troops in full force across the country writing Arabic or Farsi in planes, trains, ships, movie theaters and anywhere else they could think of.
Hmmm. There's something ever so slightly appealing about having the works of, say, Rumi grind the air system to a halt. Not that I'd really like to see that happen, but it would be poetic.
And hey, I enjoy some of those in-flight magazines, especially the horoscopes. In fact, in-flight mags are the only places I ever read my horoscope. Maybe I'm just looking to make sure that it doesn't say anything about the virtues of having one's affairs in order.
That assumes we understand their motivations. If I had to guess, I'd say that what they really want isn't any particular political state of affairs, but shocking carnage and destruction. They seem more theatrical than tactical in their planning.
That's part of living in the 9th century, isn't it? Ignore such practical issues as "what are we actually trying to achieve here, and would what further those goals" and go for histrionics. Just like our dear leader; as I said dumb and only slightly not so dumb.