Terrorism is bad, using it as an excuse is worse:Ban all pressure cookers! A Saudi student living in Michigan was questioned in his home by FBI agents after neighbours saw him carrying a pressure cooker and called the police. Talal al Rouki had been cooking a traditional Saudi Arabian rice dish called kabsah and was carrying it to a friends house. According to reports in a Saudi newspaper on Friday, the FBI are increasingly vigilant about pressure cooker home-made bombs after the Boston bombers used one to make an explosive. While armed agents surrounded his apartment block, other agents, asked a nervous Mr al Rouki if they could come in to question him. Officers said that two days earlier that a woman had seen him walking out of his apartment carrying the pressure cooker pot, which was described as bullet coloured. The young student showed them his pressure cooker and explained to them he used to make a rice dish. An FBI agent said: You need to be more careful moving around with such things, Sir
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Watch out for terrorists!
- Thread starter EOD
- Start date
Well, at least future terrorists will now know not to use a recognizable shape like a pressure cooker. Nice of the papers to publish it and to warn them off. I think papers should refrain from publishing this "sensation news" . The more attention you give to this kind of shit, the more attractive it becomes to carry out an act of terrorism.
One can see the same development with schoolshootings and so called "family tragedies" (a father or mother killing their children and than committing suicide after a bitter divorce). Lots of publicity is often the last straw for copycats.
Regards, DJH
One can see the same development with schoolshootings and so called "family tragedies" (a father or mother killing their children and than committing suicide after a bitter divorce). Lots of publicity is often the last straw for copycats.
Regards, DJH
That clueless people are talking too much?
I fully agree, the credo of journalists is "bad news are good news" and as long as they will follow this rule by their questionable nature their bad seed will grow well.
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I suppose greyish metal coloured, although I have no doubt that if the pressure cooker was purple with pink dots it was bullet coloured too.
Regards, DJH
Bullet Mick
Well-Known Member
Not been funny but if it was considered enough of a threat for the FBI to take a look why did it take them two days to get there ?.
Likely because the had to check on the 2745 other pressure cookers which had been brought to their attention the 2 days before.
I believe that part of the problem here may be that we have built a system now that needs to justify itself in order to remain relevant. - You want to keep that budget, those people, to purchase that new equipment, then there had better be a threat. No threat, no new toys.
I do not mean to imply that there are not people out there that mean us harm, there certainly are, and we should remain vigilant. But every act of violence is not terrorism, though in the past couple of years we seem to be making a greater effort than ever before to make this connection. The use of the term "terrorist" has been misused to the point that anymore it seems to be used only to alarm, not as a useful description. A second term I feel has evolved and is becoming misleading is WMD. It used to be clear what a WMD was, is involved one of the big three. Now there has been discussion of charging the Boston suspect with WMD related violations. I'm sorry, but unless that pressure cooker contained something that we have been sadly misled on, it was not a WMD - at least not in my 34 years of experience with WMDs.
As a parting note I will offer a couple of paragraphs from Wikipedia, as a starting point for those wishing to learn more:
A 2003 study by Jeffrey Record for the US Army quoted a source (Schmid and Jongman 1988) that counted 109 definitions of terrorism that covered a total of 22 different definitional elements.[SUP][7][/SUP] Record continued "Terrorism expert Walter Laqueur also has counted over 100 definitions and concludes that the 'only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence.' Yet terrorism is hardly the only enterprise involving violence and the threat of violence. So does war, coercive diplomacy, and bar room brawls".[SUP][8]
[/SUP]
As Bruce Hoffman has noted: "terrorism is a pejorative term. It is a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents, or to those with whom one disagrees and would otherwise prefer to ignore. (...) Hence the decision to call someone or label some organization 'terrorist' becomes almost unavoidably subjective, depending largely on whether one sympathizes with or opposes the person/group/cause concerned. If one identifies with the victim of the violence, for example, then the act is terrorism. If, however, one identifies with the perpetrator, the violent act is regarded in a more sympathetic, if not positive (or, at the worst, an ambivalent) light; and it is not terrorism."[SUP][3][/SUP] For this and for political reasons, many news sources (such as Reuters) avoid using this term, opting instead for less accusatory words like "bombers", "militants", etc.[SUP][[/SUP]
I do not mean to imply that there are not people out there that mean us harm, there certainly are, and we should remain vigilant. But every act of violence is not terrorism, though in the past couple of years we seem to be making a greater effort than ever before to make this connection. The use of the term "terrorist" has been misused to the point that anymore it seems to be used only to alarm, not as a useful description. A second term I feel has evolved and is becoming misleading is WMD. It used to be clear what a WMD was, is involved one of the big three. Now there has been discussion of charging the Boston suspect with WMD related violations. I'm sorry, but unless that pressure cooker contained something that we have been sadly misled on, it was not a WMD - at least not in my 34 years of experience with WMDs.
As a parting note I will offer a couple of paragraphs from Wikipedia, as a starting point for those wishing to learn more:
A 2003 study by Jeffrey Record for the US Army quoted a source (Schmid and Jongman 1988) that counted 109 definitions of terrorism that covered a total of 22 different definitional elements.[SUP][7][/SUP] Record continued "Terrorism expert Walter Laqueur also has counted over 100 definitions and concludes that the 'only general characteristic generally agreed upon is that terrorism involves violence and the threat of violence.' Yet terrorism is hardly the only enterprise involving violence and the threat of violence. So does war, coercive diplomacy, and bar room brawls".[SUP][8]
[/SUP]
As Bruce Hoffman has noted: "terrorism is a pejorative term. It is a word with intrinsically negative connotations that is generally applied to one's enemies and opponents, or to those with whom one disagrees and would otherwise prefer to ignore. (...) Hence the decision to call someone or label some organization 'terrorist' becomes almost unavoidably subjective, depending largely on whether one sympathizes with or opposes the person/group/cause concerned. If one identifies with the victim of the violence, for example, then the act is terrorism. If, however, one identifies with the perpetrator, the violent act is regarded in a more sympathetic, if not positive (or, at the worst, an ambivalent) light; and it is not terrorism."[SUP][3][/SUP] For this and for political reasons, many news sources (such as Reuters) avoid using this term, opting instead for less accusatory words like "bombers", "militants", etc.[SUP][[/SUP]