Although I no longer comment over at that other place,  I occasionally do a fly by (no pun intended) for a look-see.  On my last visit to HP, I found the following experience of a passenger aboard Flight 253. Besides needing to change my underwear, I had to ask myself what would I have done?

Over Detroit Skies

Roey Rosenblith is the Founder and Director of Village Energy (Uganda) Limited, a startup solar company that he runs out of Kampala, Uganda with his business partner Abu Musuuza. Village Energy is dedicated to providing renewable energy solutions and services to the 80% of Africans that currently lack electricity. On December 25, 2009 he was flying home on NW Flight 253, en-route from Kampala to visit his family in St. Louis. The following is his account of events that transpired on that day.

I was on my third in-flight movie when the screaming started, shattering my tired half-awake travel state. I had gone from watching Up to Inglorious Basterds and had decided to try rounding things off with Land of the Lost. That was when my fellow passenger Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab decided to ignite his explosives 19 rows ahead of me.

Read the entire article here.

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escribacat
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I am not someone who goes for conspiracy theories, but there is something missing from all the MSM accounts of this story. A couple of eye-witness accounts, including this one, mention an Indian man (or two). Here’s what Roey says about the guy when they are in Detroit:

“Behind the line of our immediate security detail there were hundreds of other police officers moving around back and forth, as if they were on they were on the night watch guarding a military base from a potential threat. What they were doing was unclear. The only thing that I recall happening is seeing an Indian guy off to the side, an older gentleman wearing a gray suit leaning against the wall. Suddenly there was a police officer next to him pulling his arms back and pulling handcuffs on him. The man didn’t struggle, the bags which seemed to be his were left there, and he and the police officer disappeared around the corner.”

Now here’s a mention of an Indian guy from another eye-witness account posted by Carolab over on HP:

Kalima
Admin

You have done nothing, we were just robbed of $6000.

Emerald1943
Member

Wow! What a great story! It was mesmerizing to read. Thanks, boomer, from bringing this one over from HP.

One thing I don’t understand…how was this hate-filled man allowed to get on that plane to begin with? We have some incredible computer systems in this world, systems that will not allow you to spend a penny more than what you have in your bank account, systems that will identify you along with your social security number, address, phone number and whether you paid your electric bill last year! Why do these systems not talk to each other? The only way we will be able to effectively stop these people from getting on aircraft is for these systems to communicate. Why is this seemingly such a problem?

I know, that’s rather simplistic, but this man was already on the “watch list” somewhere. Apparently, Amsterdam didn’t have that information.

4cats4
Member
4cats4

Wow, what an amazing and beautifully written story. Thanks for pointing us to it. I like that the stuff actually worth reading over there can be referenced over here so I don’t have to risk getting my eyeballs stabbed by hideous, negative, sensationalistic headlines by actually going there.

nellie
Member

Boomer, I’m going to capture the bulk of your post in a link to the original article. We have to be careful about reprinting material from other publishers — we run into copyright issues.

We should also source the site with a link when we reprint their material — as a precaution and a courtesy. Thanks. 🙂