For a mix of business and personal reasons, I will be making my third LA-New York flight of the summer tomorrow, this time to blog at the convention. I’m not prone to it, but for the second time in my life I am experiencing “fear of flying.” (The first was on a two a. m. Sudan Air flight from London to Cairo in the midst of a 1979 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.) The latest reports out of Russia are giving me pause. According to the New Scientist, the exact explosive used in at least one of yesterday’s crashes has been isolated:
Hexogen, also known as RDX or cyclonite, is a ring-shaped, stable chemical that only becomes explosive with the assistance of a detonator. It was widely used during World War II, where it was mixed with TNT, and is now a common constituent of plastic explosives such as Semtex. It was used in the four Moscow apartment bombings that killed more than 200 people in 1999.
Chechens, of course. But as has been reported, Al Qaeda has been in league with and training Chechen fighters for some time, so it’s hard to distinguish between one and the other. (I am having less and less patience for supposed experts and government people who erect firewalls between such groups. I wonder what the motives of these experts are.)
Meanwhile, I am getting to be an old hand at the security lines at LAX. I sure know how to whip that laptop out for inspection. Still, flying close to the convention is not pleasant to contemplate. But fortunately for me, because I procrastinated with my reservations, I am not flying into NYC on a direct flight, but breaking it up in another city. Somehow I feel it’s safer that way.
UPDATE: For those (like me) attempting to play dodge ‘em cars on the way from the airport to our hotels, and the to the Garden, Kesher Talk has all the latest on the Bakuninite hangouts.
I sort of know how you feel. My son spent the summer studying in Taipei and he flew back last weekend. As the date of that flight got closer, all of the theorizing that Terror attacks might be getting more imminent certainly weighed on my mind.
Have a safe flight.
(I am having less and less patience for supposed experts and government people who erect firewalls between such groups. I wonder what the motives of these experts are.)
In my opinion, I think some of these *experts* are in denial. They don’t want to believe that these different Islamic terrorist groups are linked to Al Qaeda, because that gives 1) Some credibility to President Bush’s assertion that Iraq had some connections with Al Qaeda, and, 2) If they Al Qaeda is *allowed* to be linked to other states, organizations and groups, it makes them look a lot more organized and potentially lethal as a force against us.
I can sympathize with your fear of flying. We flew to Florida a few weeks ago during the convention, and, it was around the time of that NorthWest Airline scare.
And OK, I admit it. I profiled in my head, my fellow passengers before we boarded. But you almost feel like you have to now, don’t you.
Scary thing is, I think some of these Chechen terrorists may have been women, I heard?
Have a safe trip! Watch out for those anarchists …
Roger,
I think you are still probably safer in the plane than you will be on your drive to the airport. My concern has to do more with the convention itself than with transportation. Reading about the lax security in Boston gave rise to some rather ugly speculation on my part. I hope that you remember to take time to identify exit routes – both primary and secondary – from your assigned area in the hall.
Best wishes for a safe trip.
Remember the brouhaha over Annie Jacobson’s concern about the Syrian musicians on her flight? Her observation of their behavior is consistent with assembling a bomb in flight. It’s been fairly well established that the group Annie observed were not engaged in such behavior, but I wonder if the Russian airplanes were a “proof of concept” test, before attempting such on an American flight? Russian security being laxer and all.
On the “experts,” I think a great deal of it is the sort of thing notthisgirl describes. I wonder if some of it’s a bit more innocent. Dividing the world into very distinct, discrete entities is a very “poli-sci” way of looking at the world, especially if your main area of expertise is a region or conflict (e.g. Europe, the Cold War) where that’s actually a pretty useful and sensible approach.
But that’s no excuse, certainly. I work at a federal government agency, and the librarian there did a wonderful service right after 9/11, circulating the most pertinent open-source articles about al Qaeda in a “to: All” e-mail. I think the best one was from Jane’s Intelligence Review. Anyhow, one of the things that was *very* clear to the people who studied AQ before 9/11 is what a decentralized, amorphous, entrepreneurial in some ways, organization it was. Never with a whole lot of top-down “control” of low-level elements. And even more to the point, al Qaeda was always viewed as a largely *inspirational* group, inspiring acts of terrorism by “new” people and groups. If those people could directly interface with bin Laden’s organization for financial and technical help, guidance, and direction, that was desirable… but not a necessity.
The people who say “oh, well, these terrorists aren’t carrying their official Al Qaeda membership cards personally signed by Osama bin Laden, with a holographic seal of authenticity, so we’re not allowed to fight them” are not only wrong, but totally misunderstand the fundamental nature of “al Qaeda” as an entity.
It seems some terrorists are claiming that they did take down the American Airlines Flight 587. I don’t know what to think of this. I could see them taking responsibility for it even though they may not have done it.
I also have a bit of fear of flying.
My safety perception is:
Best: Navy P-3 Orion with me on crew (and with parachute, helmet, flight suit, combat boots, fireproof gloves, etc).
Next: Airliner (standard psychology – loss of control compared to the P-3 even though I wasn’t a pilot on the P-3).
Worst: Single Engine Aircraft with me as pilot ( those little things are dangerous and I’m not one of those “it can’t happen to me” pilots).
I don’t do the latter any more.
Our rally in DC is on the 12th.
I may fly in on 9/11.
Then again I may go a day early.
It’s long been rumored that the Moscow blasts were at least in part carried out by the Russian secret police. National Review discussed the question a couple years ago. NRO: “Suspicions only deepened when a fifth bomb was discovered in the basement of a building in Ryazan and those responsible for placing it turned out to be agents of the Federal Security Bureau (FSB).”
And again a few months later: “The bombings were blamed on Chechen militants and united the country behind a new war in Chechnya that turned the previously unknown Putin into a national leader and guaranteed his election as president. In the period since those bombings took place, however, there has been no proof that the Chechens were responsible for them whereas powerful evidence has emerged that they were carried out by the FSB deliberately to provoke a new war in Chechnya, including the fact that FSB agents were caught planting what they later claimed was a dummy bomb in the basement of an apartment building in Ryazan.“
Speaking of the Annie Jacobsen piece, don’t look now, but…
http://english.pravda.ru/accidents/21/96/382/13929_crash.html
… uh, explosions in the toilets? Does this sound familiar?
Go for the eyes, Roger!
Uh, Roger, nothing like scaring yourself or letting friends scare you. These are scary times, but you’ll be fine. Concentrate on the stories of your trip you can later tell us.
I still love New York. I loved it when I lived there. I miss it. But I don’t want to ever go back. New York is a wonderful place to live and be a part of, but not to visit.
The convention will be fun. The protesters won’t be. But protesters are a part of New York just like the Statue of Liberty. Sometimes noiser than other times, but they’re always around. NBD, just watch your back. Living in LA you already have street smarts. So enjoy it!
The fact that the terrorists are now claiming Flight 587 was their work makes perfect sense to me. I always suspected that was terrorism ñ as Giuliani explained, it was the worst aviation disaster in the city; and the fact that it occurred so soon after 9/11 does not seem coincidental. And now with the fact that it was the tail section that broke off that plane, just as in these Russian planes, they ought to reopen that re-investigation.
I don’t buy the theory that 587 was a terrorist event. It is readily explained by the evidence given. Most like a pilot induced oscillaton after hitting wake turbulence, causing a weakened vertical stablizer to come off.
There is little knowledge about composite aircraft structure aging. The vertical stabilizer was composite.
It might be possible to fly the aircraft without the vertical stabilizer and rudder, but who knows – I’ve never been a jet pilot. Furthermore, I don’t know what systems might have been damaged when the vertical stabilizer came off – hydraulics? All hydraulic systems? And of course the pilots wouldn’t know that they had lost part of their aircraft – just that it was behaving funny. All of this may also have led to high G maneuvers that causedd the engines to separate, as they are designed to do.
Interestingly, the NTSB has not yet closed the investigation.
Roger:
I am sure you will be fine. In fact you may be safer in the plane than in NYC.
I hear that even the cab drivers are going to be demonstrating.
The Republicans should have come to Indianapolis. It would have been more boring, but safe and here in the midwest the cabbies won’t be nasty.
shorter flight too.
Syl ó LA street smarts? Speaking as an expat Noo Yawker, LA street smarts will get you killed, filleted and eaten under the clock in Grand Central Station before you can check the time…
Roger,
You required some external factor to be nervous on Sudan Airways??? Yikes. Some will no doubt call me racist, but it was always a great relief to glance in the cockpit while boarding and see that this time it was a quite British-looking chap sitting in the captain’s seat…