FBI Teddy Bear Bomb Alert

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 27
    That's an odd one.



    Did you hear/read about that woman who was killed in a car crash the day (before?) she was to testify in a illegal license trial. Her car hit a tree at slow speed and caught fire but not from the engine or gas tank. She gave/sold licenses to 5 arab men.
  • Reply 2 of 27
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    Scott, this is the part where you say "yes, but consider the source...."







    That aside, I don't think concealing a propane tank inside a teddybear is going to spoof and x-ray machine. If the clothes in your suitcase can't hide it, neither can a teddybear hide it.



  • Reply 3 of 27
    What source? The woman is dead and they can't see how the car caught on fire from the crash. Simple fact. 5 men are in trial and this woman was going to testify. Simple fact. The source doesn't matter when the facts are so plain.
  • Reply 4 of 27
    tmptmp Posts: 601member
    <a href="http://www.thestarpress.com/tsp/news/ap/stories/nation/2002-02-12-WomanCharged-66608.php"; target="_blank">Woman Charged in License Scam Dies </a>



    The TV news here made a big deal about the teddy bears. They used their usual low-key approach, playing up the Hollywood connection (the van the guy was driving looked like a film crew truck, and Santa Clarita is where a lot of special effects are done), and making it sound like it was a huge conspiracy to blow up Valentine's day.



    Sometimes I get the impression that they are drooling over the possibility of getting carnage on tape, at least the SoCal TV stations. But what can you say about an area that will cancel all programming to follow a car chase?
  • Reply 5 of 27
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    The guy buys some teddy bears and some camping supplies and he's under surveillance? Add to that the fact that he is possibly of middle eastern decent and we have a ridiculous case on our hands. How many times is the FBI going to cry wolf before we stop believing them? This is ridiculous.
  • Reply 6 of 27
    You're kidding right? Maybe a little wolf crying back in October would have save 3000 people lives.
  • Reply 7 of 27
    Hey glurx...why don't all do us all a favor and stop posting ambiguous links and sit and watch us reply to them...



    Yes, sometimes I am at fault, but at least they have relevance sometimes. Or not at all. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" />
  • Reply 8 of 27
    glurxglurx Posts: 1,031member
    [quote]Originally posted by Artman @_@:

    <strong>Hey glurx...why don't all do us all a favor and stop posting ambiguous links and sit and watch us reply to them...



    Yes, sometimes I am at fault, but at least they have relevance sometimes. Or not at all. <img src="graemlins/hmmm.gif" border="0" alt="[Hmmm]" /> </strong><hr></blockquote>



    I don't understand your objection. If I post a subject and a link to information about it this is annoying to you because...?
  • Reply 9 of 27
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    [quote]Originally posted by Scott H.:

    <strong>You're kidding right? Maybe a little wolf crying back in October would have save 3000 people lives.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Scott, you're an educated individual, so I won't patronize you by explaining the moral of the story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. But, I will try to explain myself a little better: all these false alarms are getting to be tedious and I wonder how long it'll take for people to ignore them. Crying wolf, as the story tells us, is a bad thing. Cry wolf too many times people stop listening. We have no evidence that anything is being prevented by all these alerts. To me, and many others, it looks like it's just an opportunity to have civil rights stripped away "for the public good" and I'm not buying it.
  • Reply 10 of 27
    It seems odd enough to me to warrant saying something. Bears, pressurized flammable gas and shrapnel (BBs).
  • Reply 11 of 27
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    [quote]Originally posted by Scott H.:

    <strong>It seems odd enough to me to warrant saying something. Bears, pressurized flammable gas and shrapnel (BBs).</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Maybe. I grant that. But what about the other alerts that were issued? I mean, they're basically saying, "Someone, somewhere might do something at some time." And they're saying it repeatedly. Either they have no more information than that and they should shut the hell up until they do or give out more concrete info. It's like the rumor sites saying: yeah, the OS will be updated at some point, with some features added and some bugs fixed. We don't go for that and we shouldn't go for these alerts just because the gov't tells us to.



    On another note: do you think that a person should be under surveillance just because he buys, say, some film, toy handcuffs and a teddy bear? All of these items can be purchased at a Wal-Mart. Does this mean that we have a possible pedophile on our hands? Maybe. What if these items were purchased at separate times? Does it mean that our purchase should be watched like this?No, absolutely not. It's a violation of our civil liberties and an excuse by the law-enforcers to do lazy work. Crime should be stopped but the onus should be on the people who are paid to do it and not ordinary citizens.
  • Reply 12 of 27
    Maybe yea but .... when they have something odd I'd like to know about it. The general alerts are better for the local officials. No so useful to you or me.
  • Reply 13 of 27
    imacfpimacfp Posts: 750member
    It's hard. If the FBI says nothing and something happens they are in trouble and if they say something and nothing happens they are in trouble. You can't really win.
  • Reply 14 of 27
    Maybe they should put it in with the weather. "We have winds from the East at 10 MPH and temperatures in the lower 90s. A level 2 terrorist alert has been issued and it's another ozone action day."
  • Reply 15 of 27
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    torifile, maybe one or two teddy bears, and a pair of propane tanks, and box of BBs, but mass quantities? Add in the possible race factor and it was obviously alarming enough for WalMart to call it in.



    Sure, if the guy didn't look Middle Eastern at all, it probably would have set off some alarm as well, but the addition of race was icing. Racial profiling makes sense despite its awfulness.
  • Reply 16 of 27
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    [quote]Originally posted by Eugene:

    <strong>torifile, maybe one or two teddy bears, and a pair of propane tanks, and box of BBs, but mass quantities? Add in the possible race factor and it was obviously alarming enough for WalMart to call it in.



    Sure, if the guy didn't look Middle Eastern at all, it probably would have set off some alarm as well, but the addition of race was icing. Racial profiling makes sense despite its awfulness.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I don't know, but 9 teddy bears is hardly a mass quantity. And racial profiling is illegal. Sure, people may do it, but it should not be a method of investigation. Hell, it may be a logical way to do an investigation, but the civil rights of the citizens of this country should not be violated to aid the law enforcement officials to be lazy. We have these rules in place to protect us from the people who police us because if we don't have laws to protect us, who will?



    Now, my question is still: if there is a suspected pedophile in Scott's neck of the woods in chicago, and we know that pedophiles are typically white, middle-aged men, and Scott has a teddy/bondage fetish (I'm just kidding here, Scott . You're not middle-aged, either) and he happens to buy some teddies and cuffs and film, should he be investigated? Should all middle-aged white men who buy a teddy bear and film be investigated? Without any other reason? That's the exact, same thing that's going on here. Actually, not really, because there is empirical evidence that links pedophiles to white men, as opposed to the stereotype of middle eastern men.
  • Reply 17 of 27
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    torifile, neither extreme is particularly appetizing. We need police. I need police to feel safe. You take away the police and you get a pretty crappy situation. You make the place a police state and life is no fun.



    However, when someone who is Middle Eastern catches your eye by purchasing *nine* teddy bears, more propane tanks and BBs, is that really a gross obstruction of civil rights? It is my civil right to live my life in safety.
  • Reply 18 of 27
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    Yes, it is an obstruction of civil rights because the same purchase would have gone unnoticed by a white male in Georgia. The only reason he is being singled out is his race and that is ILLEGAL. How do you know the guy wasn't dumped by his girlfriend after 9 years and she likes that kind of teddy bear and he wanted to blow them up? He should be allowed to. If he was buying the teddies for some qirls at the Mosque and the propane tanks for the barbeque for their Eid celebration and the bb's for some of the boys for target practice at the carnival they have after the prayer, should he be investigated, just because he's middle eastern? God, no. He shouldn't. And no one should stand for it because it might be middle-easterners right now, but it was Japanese in WWII (Scott, your wife's Asian, isn't she? Easily confused with Japanese...), and it could be physicists or people with Asian sounding names who live in the bay area next. But even if you're never in a targeted minority, you can't let this happen because it's just wrong.



    But it's unamerican and sympathetic to terrorists when I say this. As W said, we're either with him or against him. So, there we have it. I'm against him because I can't let this go by without at least speaking up (or typing about it here). We can't let the people who want more power to make this a police state get that power. Cops would love to live in a police state and we can't let it happen. Would the world be safer if we lived in a police state? Possibly, but I'm willing to have to lock my doors at night so that not every African American man has to be questioned by the cops when he's out late.
  • Reply 19 of 27
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    "Alert issued for potential teddy bear bombs"



    That's the headline and the story.



    The headline is not:



    "Man detained for making suspicious purchase."
  • Reply 20 of 27
    glurxglurx Posts: 1,031member
    [quote]Originally posted by Scott H.:

    <strong>What source? The woman is dead and they can't see how the car caught on fire from the crash. Simple fact. 5 men are in trial and this woman was going to testify. Simple fact. The source doesn't matter when the facts are so plain.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    <a href="http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/local_news/article/0,1426,MCA_437_985827,00.html"; target="_blank">This article says</a> in part:



    [quote] While her five co-defendants have been imprisoned without bond since their Feb. 5 arrest, Smith was released on her own recognizance. She died one day before she was due to appear at a detention hearing before a federal magistrate judge.



    "Was this death a result of an accident?" federal prosecutor Tim DiScenza asked Nash, who was the only witness to testify during Wednesday's two-hour hearing.



    "No, it was not," Nash replied.



    According to Nash, this is what FBI agents and Tennessee Highway Patrol investigators have concluded about the car crash:



    Six unnamed witnesses - all related to each other - saw Smith's 1992 Acura Legend veer off U.S. 72 around 12:45 a.m. Sunday. They said the interior of the car was on fire as the car drove across a ditch and hit a utility pole.



    The fire was arson, Nash said.



    "Every single thing inside the car is burnt," she said before noting that the trunk and gas tank were untouched by a blaze so intense that Smith's arms and legs were "burned off."



    There was only "slight damage" to the front end of the car from hitting the utility pole, she added.



    Nash said gasoline was found on Smith's clothing. She said investigators are still waiting on test results of traces of an unknown accelerant found in the car. A dog trained to sniff out such chemicals detected the accelerant.



    Smith died from "inhaling the actual flames," Nash testified <hr></blockquote>



    and



    [quote] DiScenza has said there are "connections" linking two of the accused to the World Trade Center in the days before it was destroyed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Those connections include a visitor's pass to the WTC dated Sept. 5 that belonged to Sakhera Hammad.

    <hr></blockquote>
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