Nervous Nellies got a LA-to-London flight grounded earlier this week over suspicious-looking furriners. People on the flight had to spend the night in Boston:
A flight from Los Angeles to London was diverted to Boston early Tuesday after three Pakistani passengers were reported acting suspiciously, but nothing amiss was found and the three were released after questioning… the three passengers had been “acting suspiciously and making the passengers nervous.” [Link]
All 226 passengers aboard the flight were taken off the plane while it was searched… [Link]
… the FBI also interviewed the three passengers. [Link]
What’ll get you interrogated by the FBI these days:
-
Walking around the airplane to shoot the shit with your buddies
-
Talking about the news
-
Snapping a tourist photo
-
Taking carry-ons
Federal officials said the men had spent the flight walking back and forth between their seats, one in first class, another in business class, and the third in coach. Some passengers also said they overheard the men discussing the recent London transit bombings. Some said they had another passenger take a photo of them posing together in front of the Los Angeles International Airport boarding gate. Other passengers said the men checked no luggage. [Link]
Apparently they were ‘doing much more than just walking around.’ Lemme guess: they weren’t speaking in English. Or they had free packets of peanuts stuffed in their pockets — très desi 
A spokesman for United Air Lines said the men ”were doing much more than just walking around” and alarmed the crew enough to notify the captain, but declined to provide details ”because that’s considered sensitive information…” [Link]
Snark aside, we don’t really have much info here because nobody’s releasing it. I suppose there’s a chance they were putting together bomb diagrams in Morse code while hoofing it up the aisle: one tap for red wire, two taps for green; one if by land, two if by sea. But in the absence of additional information, it does seem to be the increasingly popular triumph of suspicion over common sense.
I’ve been kind of thinking we should do a kind of protest/demonstration/flash-mob/ performance art piece to publicly respond to this.
In small, loosely coordinated groups, several hundred of us should all participate in a tourism/travel related activity — like say, going on a Grey Line bus tour of New York — on a single day.
Maybe we should be wearing T-shirts or carrying signs of some kind. I’m not exactly sure what should be on the signs/shirts yet, though one contender might be:
“I AM NOT SUSPICIOUS.”
(I’m not completely happy with that slogan. Any other suggestions?)
BTW, I am dead serious. I think we need to make a statement about the absurdity of the current situation. Are people interested?
I think that’s a great idea. Say when!
Well, if we do it on a weekend we would probably get more people involved. But if we do it on a weekday we probably have a better shot of getting media coverage.
I’m undecided.
In terms of time frame, I was thinking August 7 (Sunday) or 8 (Monday). It would be great if we could go even sooner — while all this is still fresh in people’s minds — but I doubt things could get organized in time for next week.
Lets do it NY.
In a somewhat related vein, what happens when you a cross an unscrupulous Indian businessman who poses as an international arms trader, with a number of federal agents who want to prove that homeland security dollars are being well spent? You get the pathetic story of one Hemant Lakhani, which was a feature story on This American Life.
http://www.thislife.org – go to the 2005 archive, the program aired on July 8.
I’m so down if this takes place in NYC!
i am down with it – cant do it on saturday of this week – but i think a weekend would get a bigger turnout.
my suggestion: a whole bunch of us show up wearing backpacks at a Gray Line bus tour with the word “NOT SUSPICIOUS” written on it and prominently displayed on the backpack.
Does anybody know the identity of those 6 Brit Asians who were on the bus the other day in NY and the police made them lay on the street ? Were they Indians or Pakistanis ?
Ok, maybe let’s try for Sunday August 7. I like Turbanhead’s idea about the backpacks (though I gather from Bloomberg’s apology that the guys may not even have been wearing backpacks; it might simply have been “embellishment” on the part of the Grey Line ticket seller).
I’m not much of an organizer type… will need help. If any of you know people at desi or civil rights activist groups in New York, I would be grateful for contact information (you can send it to amardeep AT gmail.com).
I’ll also try and come up with a draft of a ‘forwardable’ email later today.
the bbc says they were Sikh
I like the idea of t-shirts WITH backpacks. Manish can bring his camera, seeing as that’s dead suspicious these days…
the idea of taking over the top deck of one of those red tourist busses is delicious
According to the New York Times and NY Daily News, they were not wearing backpacks.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/26/nyregion/26tourist.html The men were handcuffed for 10 minutes while the police searched them and looked for backpacks that the police ultimately determined the men did not have.
http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/331950p-283530c.html: Mayor Bloomberg accused a sightseeing bus company yesterday of providing false information to the NYPD – causing heavily armed cops on Sunday to yank five British tourists off a bus and handcuff them.
“There were reports that these gentlemen had knapsacks, and it was a question as to what was in them,” Bloomberg said yesterday. “They didn’t even have any knapsacks.”
Thanks for confirming that, Tara.
Now I think the T-shirts should say: “I’m not wearing a backpack. Go figure!”
😉
And yes, we should wear backpacks anyways. Just to annoy them.
one thing you have to take into consideration with a large group meeting is whether a permit is required. i dont want (and am assuming) no one else wants to get arrested – the cops are very overzealous today.
ideally – it would drive home the point if 30 – 40 or however many can fit on one of the buses all bought tickets and got on at the same time.
lastly, if this is going to take place – there should be some check-in procedure – all particpants have to show backpacks and make sure they are indeed empty.
yes i am a pessimist and wouldnt put it past a sleeper cell to attend with something their bag 😉
Reminds me of one of my black, computer-geek friends who dressed down and worked on several floors in his building. This earned him the stares and uneasy vibes of quite a few older, white ladies who rode the elevator with him. So he got himself a t-shirt that read “DON’T WORRY, LADY, I’M NOT GOING TO MUG YOU” and wore it a lot to work.
That he had to do that is sad. That I have to consciously avoid my normal klutziness when traveling cross-country this weekend is even sadder. Brings back memories of being “randomly chosen” after 9/11.
“yes i am a pessimist and wouldnt put it past a sleeper cell to attend with something their bag ;)”
yeah, I’d hate for some crazy to co-opt this event for their twisted purpose. How about a picture of a backpack on the back of the t-shirt instead?
Yeah, I agree with Turbanhead. I’m always down for ridiculing nervous nellies, and think it’s offensive as hell when these stupid fuckwits cringe back from someone cause he/she is brown. But I don’t want to make life for the cops any more confusing or harder.
Regarding the sikh tourists, I don’t know what’s the big fuss. Even the guy said no hard feelings.
Siddhartha, the fuss is that just being brown seems to be enough to label you as a terrorist. Suddenly the most ordinary of activities (hands in pockets, full pockets, buying tickets in advance, talking to friends, pacing) become “suspicious” enough to warrent you being thrown up against something and handcuffed.
I don’t think it’s no big deal. I think those guys were just being very gracious. Let’s not attribute the latter to the former.
As the mayor points out in this article, people “embellish” the facts:
(posted same link and quote on some other thread yesterday. Sorry for reposting, but seems like a good point.)
They were Indian Sikhs. Once again being mistaken for Osamas.
Identity confusion and ignorance , this is why some people feel its important that Sikhs need to raise awareness and to certain extent assert their own identity in America.
But then again brown is brown is brown.
Amardeep, for slogans, how ’bout –
“why is it suspicious when I do it?“
(yeah, I know why..but might work better on a tshirt. I think. We brainstormed about this on another thread, but I don’t think we came up with anything really good for a protest.)
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3285261
interested in everyone’s thoughts on this article.
Maybe we could play analogies? Too wordy for a Tshirt?
“Timothy McVeigh is to you, as Osama bin Ladin is to me.‘
I understand your point but in this instance it wasn’t about them being singled out due to their Sikh appearance, these guys were targeted for being brown desis. (they weren’t turbaned Sikhs)
or “ignorance is suspicious”
Or ‘I’m an American.’
I didn’t know that. That changes my view on things a bit.
“Not Afraid”
cicatrix writes:
Utter nonsense. There’s half-a-million brown folks(100 thousand desis) who commute in NYC everyday(since 7/7) without any incident. But five Sikhs are searched and folks try to make an international case out of this. Chill out.
I agree that this is demeaning and humiliating. But what do you want cops to do? Handcuff nuns just to be impartial?
Profiling is here to stay until technology advances enough to “smell” bombs from a distance. Just yesterday I saw a news item that talked about a new device at Newark International Airport which could “smell” drugs and explosives, thus reducing( and eventually eliminating) the need for pat-down searches.
Stock market tip: Buy stocks in companies doing this kind of research or with these products in the pipeline. They are mostly penny stocks – so you need to have the stomach for the risk.
M. Nam
I don’t know, man. Of my brown friends/students I’d say at least 75% of them were searched/rucksacked this past week. Especially the women, myself included. I’m not the only one.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/3285261
If they were profiling only Arab and South Asian men, then the Jamaican bomber would have gone through on 7-7 and the Eriterean and Somalian bomber a week later would have gone undetected too.
Nivritti,
I read the Paul Sperry column you linked to.
My rejoinder to “Without Profiling, Bag Searches Useless” would be something like: “With Profiling, Bag Searches Unconstitutional.”
The random searches (when they are truly random) are actually a pretty good way of discouraging potential terrorists. It’s obviously not foolproof, but it does send the message that law enforcement is keeping an eye on things. And the fact that the police seem to be moving around to different stations, at different times of the day, and searching using an undisclosed numerical formula — all of that would make it harder for a potential terrorist to make a plan.
I personally support it — if it is truly being done at random. (We’ll see the next time I’m in the city and I use a subway station where searches are being done)
However, even the random searches may not really be constitutional if there isn’t an immediate threat to public safety.
Moornam, you know that hoary adage “there are no atheists in a foxhole”?
Well, I’m thinking of coining another one..something like, “there are no wrongfully accused colored conservatives.”
But somehow conservatives doesn’t seem like the right word…So..what would you call yourself? 🙂
MoorNam,
Utter nonsense. There’s half-a-million brown folks (100 thousand desis) who commute in NYC everyday(since 7/7) without any incident. But five Sikhs are searched and folks try to make an international case out of this. Chill out.
I agree that it’s a relatively small incident, but it’s still not cool.
I envision this as a fun protest/demonstration to make a point, not the kind of thing with people shouting and waving signs.
The fact that the city — indeed, the Republican mayor — has apologized is worth keeping in mind. The idea of this (still admittedly hypothetical) protest isn’t to vent anger; it’s more like asking people to think about their prejudices and misconceptions.
Actually, the police chief has indicated that in general in situations of baseless ‘suspicion’ (i.e., where there is no actual evidence of a threat), they wouldn’t be using handcuffs at all, just doing interviews.
Given the The James Woods incident from August 2001, nobody knows what they can safely ignore as innocuous.
before this devolves into something else, the original comment from Amardeep was to stage one of those flashmob things. Show up wear a shirt/sign, disperse.
No yelling, screaming, throwing feces. Make a statement – even a quiet one – perhaps record it using a camera phones – and post images immediatley all over the net and move on.
I don’t think he (and correct me if I am wrong A) was envisoning anything on the scale or style of a G8 protest.
Turbanhead,
That’s exactly right.
Shit, I was going to be down for this flashmob thing. Until I read turbanhead’s suggestion that all the backpacks be searched beforehand. So what separates you from the cops, exactly? Lack of a badge and a gun? So brown on brown suspicion is okay? If you’re afraid of getting arrested, stay home. If you’re afraid a terrrorist is going to infiltrate your party, stay home. The idea is cool. The execution is lacking thought and balls.
Amardeep/Turbanhead,
A fun protest is a great idea – it creates much needed awareness. Wish you the best!
Vikram,
Nice link! The definition of “innocuous” and “innocent behaviour” will change after every such incident. In the 80’s it was ok to make bomb jokes in the airport. Once a couple of flights went down(PANAM and AirIndia) due to terrorist bombs, people lost the “freedom” to tell bomb jokes in planes and airports.
cicatrix,
You’ve boxed yourself into brown-category, but why do you have to box me into categories, especially since you know nothing about me? If you do want to know more about my ideas, start by reading the following articles I’ve written on Sulekha:
The Principle of Continuity The Principle of Continuity – 2 Male-Female in the Principle of Continuity The Principle of Money The Principle of Violence The Principle of Adaptation
US Elections: A Desi perspective The trial of Adi Shankara
and others that you can search on Sulekha.
That should keep you busy for a while.
M. Nam
Turbanhead sez:
Is this another attempt at irony? Can sluggo help me out here.
You don’t want the authorities to do this kind of stuff, but you want to do it yourself?
MoorNam,
I’m sorry to take offense so easily. I hope you can adjust your funny bone to accomodate me (I know it’s a lot to ask for) cause otherwise we will be butting heads quite often. That last post of mine was tongue-in-cheek.
Thank you for the reading material. Sulekha is an interesting and informative site, and so are your writings.
It is amusing, though, that you should take such umbrage at being “boxed into a catagory” when you wrote the following in US Elections: A Desi Perspective:
You’re disclaimer:
Now, I don’t know about other Sepia readers, or about other desis at large, but I think that “most desis” would be horrified by your description.
Speaking for myself, I am none of those things, and “handing me a paycheck” is not the best way to make me smile.
to clarify a typo: I meant to say:
I’m sorry you take offense so easily.
PaycheQUES make me smile. I’ll take your paycheque cicatrix. I underachieve in business and wealth-creation. I live in a McSquat and I drive a 1.0 litre rickshaw. But I love dem paycheques. So cica, he was almost right.
BongBreaker, I too live in a McSquat. I don’t even have wheels, and I work for pennies… I’m a little tired of people assuming that, since I’m a desi, I’m either raking in the dough, or my parents are raking it in for me. If desis continue to give credence to such stereotypes, how are we to argue when non-desis make them about us?
And I think all the desi taxi-drivers, cornershop-owners, maids, janitors, underpaid TAs, and secretaries out there might not love the fact that they’re supposed to be this negligible minority.
Also, way to paint us grasping and vulgar. Now when newspapers writer about a “semicelebrated hustler” desi, this is like giving them a free pass to do so.
Bush on the lines of Hitler and Nazis. Moore’s movie, full of half-truths and outright lies, is a sign of desperation by neo-liberals. They are trying to paint a false picture that the Republicans are disenfranchising all blacks in Florida. These tactics will backfire, just as the corresponding campaign against Narendra Modi backfired in Gujarat and he received a thumping victory.
Moornam, Was there a campaign of ‘half truths’ and ‘outright lies’ against Modi in Gujarat ? Could you please elaborate on the above.
for some reason I was mentally prepared for a Vikram Chatwal link, since you said Semicelebrated Hustler. 🙂
Ha! yeah, but the NY glitterati just lurve HIM..he panders so carefully to orientalist fantasies, they wouldn’t dream of mocking him! Besides, he has a knife! sexy!
(don’t want to derail this thread, so VC lovers can just email me directly. thanks!)
to get back to the original idea, let’s do t-shirts with signs saying ‘Relax, I’m Not A Terrorist’ or some such. But let’s do something.
So, am I going to be the one-person New Orleans mob?
crickets
[Then again, this would be safer performed in the North than down here.]
If no action was taken a the plane was hijacked and flown into a nuclear power plant then we’d be in a right old state. I would rather be inconvenienced than dead, and if you want to find someone to blame for nervous officials, there were four of them that blew themselves up in London, you may have heard of that.
“I would rather be inconvenienced than dead, and if you want to find someone to blame for nervous officials, there were four of them that blew themselves up in London, you may have heard of that.”
How daft is that? The whole point is to point out to a jittery public that not everyone with brown skin is a suicide bomber. And being handcuffed instead of being questioned isn’t ‘inconvenience’, it’s humiliation. And the point is to prevent suicide attacks without humiliating people, especially when it is done, as in the case of the guys in NYC, without the faintest trace of anything that might cause people to suspect they were about to blow themselves up (no wires, bulky coats, or backpacks, not that any of that constitutes cause for harrassment).
So four people blow themselves up in London, so everyone who is remotely of their ethnicity should be prepared to be handcuffed and made to kneel on the street for no apparent reason?
By the way, the next set of London bombers weren’t even South Asian – they were North/East African. Shall we add black people to the ‘oh look, he must be a terrorist’ list, then?
Incidentally, what would people do if the next set of bombers, were there to be another set (God, hope not!) turned out to be white converts to Islam? Will all white people then be prepared to be ‘inconvenienced’? Something tells me they won’t have to be.