Once the behavior was reported, then the authorities had a choice. They deliberated for a while as people sat on the plane and finally decided to take the men off to ask them WTF they were doing. I don’t see how that’s inappropriate, or racist, or anything. If they had acted like a typical person, no one would have reported any behavior and this incident would never have happened. This was a CAIR propaganda operation pure and simple, and an effective one judging by some of the comments here.

Hahahahahaha!!!

Don’t you? Oh, and don’t take my above comment personally – you could well be right about the liberal guilt thing – I’m just crabby today. I should probably get off the internet tubes before I say something *really* stupid.

Are you saying that only people of colour have the right to report suspicous activity on airlines, when the suspicious person is apparently of Middle Eastern descent?

No, he’s making a prediction that, like the trailer trash in Florida that saw swarthy muslims in a diner and called the cops, the complainants were probably white. He said nothing that should have caused your O’Reilly Factor trick knee do the “liberal guilt” jerk.

Hahahahahaha!!!

I would agree with this…although I think the airlines were fully right on this occasion.

Sometimes there are hysterias, and racism is a reality. I say this a someone who was regularly profiled back in the 80s-90s whenever I would fly through Heathrow…and I would always be pulled out of line by security and searched…mainly cause I did tend to look like a “Red Brigades/Baader-Meinhof” terrorist.

I just shrugged and went along. But I concede there should be no “Absolute” power on the part of airlines here.

Thus, while I thought this was all bollocks when they were going to sue the airlines, I just shrugged.

But suing the passengers is radically different…and, I feel, exposes their underlying agenda.

After all, from your last flight, how detailed is your knowledge of your fellow passengers?

Pretty good, because I hate everyone on flights. If one of them was the proximate cause of me getting $&% arrested, their awful visages would be seared into my memory.

The last woman that sat next to me was about 38, brown hair, bad perm, too much makeup, about 140lbs. And she wouldn’t shut up, even though I was conspicuously trying to read.

Factual accounts seem to differ, and courts are designed to parse differing factual accounts. So let ‘em sue. If the other passengers’ complaints weren’t in bad faith or totally retarded, they’ve got nothing to worry about. Heck, they’ve even got pro bono counsel lined up.

Are you saying that only people of colour have the right to report suspicous activity on airlines, when the suspicious person is apparently of Middle Eastern descent?

I remember that when Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, tried to ignite his shoe bomb, one of the passengers who subdued him was a very large African American basketball player.

Thus, in your analysis, that case is perfectly OK.

But a white person has to sit and watch Reid blow up the plane, because otherwise they would be guilty of racism?

I know, this is an “reductio absurdum” of your argument, but that is clearly the implication.

Have all of you forgotten that the gate attendant who checked Mohammed Atta on 9-11 thought he was suspicious, but then mentally second-guessed and dismissed any suspicious thought as being racist?

God save us all from liberal guilt.

Oh and you’re a fine one to talk about false accusations of prejudice, by the way. Tell me, have you ever, once in your entire life, taken the side of a Muslim on anything? Do enlighten me, because to judge from your time on TMV, not only are posts involving Muslims (or anything that could be associated to them) the only thing that interests you, they are ALWAYS wrong, no matter what. I generally take a fairly hard line myself, but stop short of deciding that if theirs a Muslim involved, he/she must be wrong.

We soar through the air with the greatest unease,
With prayer-matted imams, down on their knees.
“Board that plane, dhimmi,� shout the PC’s,
“Better step lively, or face civil pleas.�
They won’t scan my pork, or transport my booze.
I got the St. Paul Sharia Blues.

If someone calls the cops to report that lesbians live in the house next door to him, that’s bigotry; the caller hasn’t committed an actionable crime. It’s up to the cops (or airline employees) to decide, whether they need to take action.

If the caller directly harasses his lesbian neighbors, then he has crossed the line into actionable behavior.

No one should be subject to a lawsuit just for thinking inappropriately – or we’d all be in court.

I am not assuming, but guessing that those who freaked were white, there is a difference. Strictly speaking, there could have been blacks, hispanics, and/or asians among those passengers who freaked. Actually, I would be interested in knowing whether my guess is actually correct or not, so if anyone could do either for this incident, I would be extremely grateful.

My guess comes from historical precedent of white Americans freaking over the culture of any other racial minorities in the US. If you look at the history of race riots for example, almost all of them are perpetrated by whites who are afraid of other racial groups settling near their homes.

I must confess I myself am white and have grown up in predominantly white neighborhoods. I am much more than aware of the attitudes towards other races held by whites and have been guilty of such myself. The problem is this country is too comfortable in its wealth to deal with these problems. Not all whites freak when confronted by members of other races, but I think they are more likely to do so since more than any other group, white citizens of this country are typically isolated from the rest.

But my concern is with the climate of fear being generated by the current administration. After flying out of LA last week, I felt as if we were a bunch of sheep slowly being stripped of our freedoms in order to create in us a greater desire for “protection,” which “big brother” is more than happy to offer.

A frightened electorate is malleable in the worst ways.

Thus, I wonder just how real all of this is.

The neo-cons, neo-fascists, are not to be trusted; like Hitler’s shenanigans with the Reichstag fire and the alleged Polish intrusion, some minds will not stop at harming their own people in order to broaden their control.

The fact that they are not only going after the airline…but identifying the passengers is a clear sign that there was a plan in advance to make this a “federal case”. After all, from your last flight, how detailed is your knowledge of your fellow passengers? These imams have made detailed descriptions of those who identified them…not exactly typical of people just wanting to fly.

I would add, when the GOP surprised Congress by sending a bill back to committee to include a retroactive protection from litigation for passengers who identify suspicious behaviour on airlines…many Democrats responded with outrage. The votes against allowing such protection were all Democrats.

If this protection does not exist, it would be a weapon in the arsenal of any hijacker, as people would be terrified of even looking sideways at someone acting suspicious — like the shoe bomber Richard Reid was — for fear of a multimillion dollar lawsuit backed by CAIR and Saudi grants.

It was not the praying. They prayed before the flight and were allowed to get on the plane. The suspicious activity happened once they got on the plane. They happened to sit next to an arabic speaker who over heard them talking in arabic about bin laden, the injustice of Saddam’s execution, and “terrorism.” According to people on the plane, some of them paced nervously in the aisles while whispering in arabic. Some requested seat-belt extensions that were not needed. In addition to praying in the terminal they prayed again on the plane, but typical Muslim practice is to pray once at sundown and not twice. There were many more weird acts that were perhaps not suspicious singly, but suspicious as a whole.

Many passengers thought their activities were suspicious and they told the crew. None of the passengers were suspicious until they actually got onto the plane. The Captain, after conferring with the Air Marshall, airline and airport security – who all agree they were acting suspiciously, decided to get the FBI involved and they were taken off the plane.

It seems pretty clear to me their intent was to get kicked off the flight to generate this lawsuit and publicity. The fact they continue to make threats like suing the passengers, which is totally ridiculous, only indicates to me they are milking this incident.