America's Empty Slogan: "See Something, Say Something"

Townhall.com ^ | April 17, 2013 | Michelle Malkin

[Kaslin]

In brief remarks to the nation yesterday on the Boston Marathon bombings, President Obama said that "we all have a part to play in alerting authorities. If you see something suspicious, speak up." In Washington, D.C., electronic signs urged commuters to be on guard. Law enforcement, big-city mayors and security experts all echoed that famous post-terrorism refrain: "If you see something, say something."

But who really means it?

In post-9/11 America, the truth is that our politically correct guardians only want you to see, say or do something if it can't be construed by grievance-mongers as racist, sexist, Islamophobic, homophobic, nativist or any other "-ist" or "-ic."

Face it: We live in a self-defeating culture that pays lip service to heroic action in times of crisis, yet brutally punishes the very kind of snap judgments and instant security profiling that make such heroism possible in the first place.

Just take a look at some of the caustic reactions to citizens and watchdogs who stuck out their necks during and after the Boston Marathon bombings. A quick-thinking spectator at the race reportedly tackled a 20-year-old Saudi Arabian student visa holder he believed was acting suspiciously. The student is not considered a suspect at this point, but remains a "person of interest" in the case. The student's home was searched Monday night in Revere, Mass., by a phalanx of law enforcement agencies.

Time magazine correspondent Michael Crowley clucked: "It'll be a real shame if a Saudi guy was tackled and held simply for running in fright -- and for being an Arab." Music producer Sledgren took to Twitter to bemoan "prejudice America." Indian television anchor Gargi Rawat called the civilian's actions "sad." Gawker editor Max Read declared: "(T)his poor Saudi kid should sue the guy who tackled him."

For what? For taking all those "See Something, Say Something" ads seriously? Hang him!

If the Saudi student tries to sue, we already know who will provide legal aid and comfort. In 2007, when passengers reported concerns about a group of rowdy flying imams, the Council on American-Islamic Relations threatened to sue the unnamed "John Does" who went to authorities. Thankfully, Congress passed legislation protecting whistleblowers.

As GOP Rep. Bill Shuster said at the time: "No American should ever be sued because they tried to stop a terrorist act. No American should be forced to second-guess a decision to alert authorities that could save the lives of others."

Nobody knows what's going on behind closed doors as the current bombing investigation continues, yet media scribes, foreign journalists and social media sideliners are convinced: The tackler is racist. Anyone who mentions the nationality of the tackled student is racist. Forget terrorism. RAAAAAAACISM is the real homeland security threat to our nation.

The same unserious response greeted anyone who breathed public mention of the fact that the Boston Police Department issued a BOLO alert Monday afternoon for a suspicious individual. Investigators warned police officers to be on the lookout for a "darker-skinned or black male" with a "possible foreign accent."

Incredibly, BPD got blasted for issuing an alert that was both too broad and too specific. "That's all of Boston," one critic carped. Others protested disclosure of any descriptive details. A common retort: "Why?"

Why? Well, if we're all serious about bringing the killers and their conspirators to justice, it kinda helps to know what they might look like. Just saying.

The Shut Up Brigade struck again after a U.S. Airways plane at Boston's Logan Airport was evacuated Tuesday because of suspicions about two passengers seated apart and speaking Arabic. "Racist paranoia," blogger Shymala Dason decried. "Ugh," wrote Newsweek social media editor Brian Ries. "This is ridiculous," fumed Arabic language educator Jinanne Tabra.

Ridiculous? Tell that to shell-shocked marathon runners and their families traveling home after the Boston terror bombing. They were the ones on the plane, at the very airport where Arabic-speaking 9/11 jihadists hijacked two flights and brought down the Twin Towers. I won't second-guess any of them or the bystanders who tackled the Saudi student -- because I have not forgotten.

I still haven't forgotten the passengers and crewmembers who tackled al-Qaida shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

I still haven't forgotten Brian Morgenstern, the teenage Circuit City worker who contacted authorities in 2007 when suspicious Middle Easterners brought in tapes of themselves shooting off guns and shouting "Allahu Akbar." The men were convicted of plotting to kill American soldiers at Fort Dix.

I still haven't forgotten the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a flight attendant that several Arab men sitting in the first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.

Hindsight hypocrites will only give you immunity from public excoriation if you can guarantee in advance that your fears or suspicions are 100 percent right. And no one can.

To hell with the "See Something, Do Nothing" cowards who sit on the sidelines wielding their "racism" and "Islamophobia" cards in the aftermath of every terrorist attack. I would rather be damned if I do than dead if I don't.

[US Navy Vet]

Unless it’s a WORTHLESS Mexican or Moslem then out Equally a WORTHLESS “Federal” Gubment don’t want to see NOTHING!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I’ve noticed something suspicious at 1600 Pennsylvania...

[Redleg Duke]

“Big Brother is Watching You!”

[Liz]

BEEN SUCKING-UP, BIG GUY?

Looks like he got a mouthful.
(GAG) God knows where his mouth has been.

No American is safe with this legacy-obsessed clown and his henchmen in the White House.....not Bostonians, not 8-yo kids, not physically fit marathon runners, not marathon observers on the sidelines....nobody is safe....and that includes soldiers on US military bases (Ft Hood) and US embassies abroad (benghazi).

B-U-T THE CLOWN HAS ANOINTED SOME W/ "PROTECTED CLASS" (Democrat voters): some sectors are safe---given safe passage by the WH clown.

(1) SAFE: Ohaha worshippers--Robert Redford’s Terrorist Heroes FrontPageMag.com ^ | Arpil 16, 2013 | Bosch Fawstin / FR Posted by Perseverando “ALL OF IT,” said Robert Redford, when asked if he supported the bombings by The Weather Underground. Redford came out for terrorism on a mainstream morning television show in an interview with democrat-operative-leftist-hack George Stephanopoulos, who was slobbering over Redford’s pro-terrorist movie, The Company You Keep. I drew my illustration of Redford, below, days ago, and I wonder if he’s for the terrorist attack in Boston today. Or maybe he wants to wait and see if it’s leftist terrorists before he decides he’s all for it. Below is a list of what Robert Redford was for, via Sean Hannity on FOX News. The Weather Underground’s history of terrorism consisted of: 1970: SFPD Bombing (1 Killed) 1970: NYPD Bombing (7 Hurt) 1970: NYC Explosion (3 Killed) 1971-72: Capital & Pentagon Attacked 1981: Armed Robbery (3 Killed)

(2) SAFE: Prostrate politicians, kneeling in oberisance all puckered up, sucking up to Ohaha...especially if they feed the legacy obsession.......particularly if they push for "immigration reform" which puts Americans in danger.

(3) SAFE: The Muslim Brotherhood got couple billion tax dollars from Ohaha to carry out their hateful jihad against America.

(4) SAFE--- Mexican cartels deep inside US - spreading into non-border states CHICAGO (AP) — Mexican drug cartels whose operatives once rarely ventured beyond the US border are dispatching some of their most trusted agents to live and work deep inside the United States — an emboldened presence that experts believe is meant to tighten their grip on the world's most lucrative narcotics market and maximize profits. If left unchecked, authorities say, the cartels' move into the American interior could render the syndicates harder than ever to dislodge and pave the way for them to expand into other criminal enterprises such as prostitution, kidnapping-and-extortion rackets and money laundering.

Some cartels even have Mexican operatives fill out job applications before being dispatched to the US, Riley added. In Mexico, the cartels are known for a staggering number of killings — more than 50,000, according to one tally. Beheadings are sometimes a signature. So far, cartels don't appear to be directly responsible for large numbers of slayings in the United States, though the Texas Department of Public Safety reported 22 killings and five kidnappings in Texas at the hands of Mexican cartels from 2010 through mid- 2011. Still, police worry that increased cartel activity could fuel heightened violence.--SNIP--

In Chicago, the police commander who oversees narcotics investigations, James O'Grady, said street-gang disputes over turf account for most of the city's uptick in murders last year, when slayings topped 500 for the first time since 2008. Riley's assessment is stark: He argues that the cartels should be seen as an underlying cause of Chicago's disturbingly high murder rate. "They are the puppeteers," he said. "Maybe the shooter didn't know and maybe the victim didn't know that. But if you follow it down the line, the cartels are ultimately responsible." (NY POST EXCERPT)

SOURCE http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/mexican_cartels_dispatch_agents_ZsKwR5wQCvQvpBXnejs1TJ

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The amnesty bill grants broad discretionary powers to the Executive Branch. Dictatorial powers Ohaha has alreay grabbed, were conferred on DHS, the EPA, and the various Obamacare boards.

UNCLE OBAMA---legacy freak

[TexasFreeper2009]

the problem is.... we don’t even know if the suspects were there.

The bombs could have been planted the night before.

[johnny reb]

I see socialists destroying America more effectively and more completely than million lunatics with pressure cookers.

[West Texas Chuck]

If the FBI are to be believed they were not there when the area was swept that morning, showed up sometime later.

Gotta be Islamonutballs, who bombs a sporting event?

[TexasFreeper2009]

I don’t think a bomb sniffing dog would care if it walked past a pressure cooker.

the dogs are sniffing for explosives.

[SpirituTuo]

When I look at the pictures (before and after), one sees the bomb sitting on the street side of the crowd control rails.

That image brings up a number of questions. The first, when they put the rails up, didn’t they notice the item? If they did, why didn’t somebody toss it? If they didn’t, why not?

Secondly, this is a world-class event, why would the organizers allow a trash heap?

My gut tells me the bomb was placed before the rails went up. The reason nobody removed the bomb was because it “wasn’t their job.”

If people had noticed it, they should have said something. When you are in the airport, every third announcement is to notify authorities of unattended bags.

[calljack]

“See Something Say Something”is a good slogan if they would tell us what exactly “See Something” means. Israeli counter terrorism has an 11 point list of what the “Somethings” are and even small children in Israel know to alert somebody to an unattended package.
here is the list on how to spot a suicide bomber. Excerpt from Lee Child - Gone Tomorrow(changed up a bit)

1) Fresh Shave: Male Bombers take off their beards. It helps them blend in. Makes them less suspicious. The result is paler skin on the lower half of the the face. No recent exposure to the sun.

2) Inappropriate Clothing: By Now explosive belts are as evolved as baseball gloves. Take a three-foot by two foot sheet of heavy canvas, fold once longitudinally and you have a continuous pocket a foot deep. Wrap the pocket around the bomber and sew it together in the back. Zippers or snaps can lead to second thoughts. Insert a stockade of dynamite of dynamite sticks into the pocket all the way around, wire them up, pack nails or ball bearings into the voids, sew the top seam shut, add crude shoulder straps to take the weight. Altogether effective but altogether bulky. The only practical concealment, an oversized garment like a padded winter parka. Never appropriate in the MIddle East and plausible in most of the US maybe three months in twelve.

3) A Robotic Walk: Significant at a checkpoint or in a crowded marketplace or outside a church or mosque. Bombers walk robotically not because they are overcome with ecstasy at the thought of imminent martyrdom, but because they are carrying forty extra pounds of unaccustomed weight, which is biting into their shoulders through crude suspender straps, and because they’re drugged. Martyrdoms appeal goes only so far. Most bombers are browbeaten simpletons wish a slug of raw opium paste held between gum and cheek. This is known because dynamite belts explode with a characteristic doughnut-shaped pressure wave that rolls up the torso in a fraction of a second and lifts the head clean off the shoulders. The human head isn’t bolted on. It just rests there by gravity, somewhat tied down my skin, muscles, tendons and ligaments, but those insubstantial biological anchors don’t do much against the force of a chemical explosion. The easiest way to determine if an attack was cause by a suicide bomber is to search a 80 or 90 foot radius around the explosion looking for a severed head, strangely intact and undamaged, even down to the opium plug in the cheek.

4) Sweating: Sweating could be cause by #1 and the base of Dynamite is Wood Pulp which is a very good thermal insulator, so sweating may not be the most important point to look at, but it is certainly a good thing to notice

5) Irritability

6) Tics

7) Nervous Behavior: #4, 5 & 6 are very good indicators though they can all be linked to each other. These people are in the last weird moments of their lives, axious, scared of pain and woozy with narcotics. They are irrational by definition. Believing, skeptical or not believing at all in paradise and rivers of milk and honey with lush pastures and loads of virgins, ripe for the taking, driven by ideological pressures or by the expectations or their peers and their families, suddenly in too deep and unable to back out. Brave talk in clandestine meetings is one thing. Action is another. Hence suppressed panic with all its visible signs.

8) Breathing: You tend to breathe hard when contemplating blowing yourself up. These are your last breaths and it helps to keep you from screaming.

9) Fixed Staring: suicide bombers about to go into action stare rigidly ahead. No one knows why but video evidence and eyewitnesses have been entirely consistent in their reports. Bombers stare straight ahead. Perhaps they have screwed their commitment up to the stiking point and fear intervention (i don’t see you, you don’t see me mindset). Perhaps a last shred of conscience means they can’t look at the people they are about to destroy. No one knows why but they all do it.

10) Mumbled Prayers: To date, all known attacks have had something to do with religion, almost exclusively the Islamic religion and Islamic people are accustomed to praying in public. Eyewitnesses report long formulaic incantations run through and repeated endlessly and more or less inaudibly but with visibly moving lips.

11) A Large Bag: Dynamite is a stable explosive as long as it is fresh. It doesn’t go off by accident. It needs to be triggered by blasting caps. Blasting caps are wired with detonater cord to an electrical supply and a switch. The big plungers in old western movies were both things together. The first part of the handle’s travel spun up a dynamo, like a field telephone and then the switch was tripped. Not practicle for portable use. For portable use you need a battery and for a linear yard of explosive you need some volts and amps. Tiny AA cells put out a weak volt and a half. Not enough according to prevailing rules of thumb. A Nine-Volt battery is better and for a decent kick you want one of the big square soup-can-sized cells sold for serious flashlights. Too big and heavy for a pocket, hence the bag. The battery nestles in the bottom of the bag, wires come off it to the switch, then they head on out through and unobtrusive slit in the back of the bag and then they loop up inder the hem of the inappropriate garment.

12) Hands in the bag: Point twelve is a recent addition, due to a tactic adopted to stop suicide bombers. If your suspicions were aroused, you didn’t run. No point, really. You can’t run faster than shrapnel. What you did instead was grab the suspect in a desperate bear-hug. You pinned their arms to their sides, thus stopping them from reaching the switch and setting off the bomb. This tactic helped save many lives until the bombers learned from their mistakes. Bombers are now taught to keep their thumb on the switch at all times to make the bear hug irrelevant. The button is in the bag next to the battery so thats why their hand is in the bag.

[BitWielder1]

the problem is.... we don’t even know if the suspects were there.

The point is, WE DON'T KNOW.
To report something and then to be told "You should not have reported THAT! It's racist!" is self-defeating and dangerous.

[toolman1401]

Dogs love pressure cookers. Tasty meat comes out of that pot.

[dfwgator]

“These aren’t the muslims you’re looking for.”

[TexasFreeper2009]

actually, after having read a little more it appears they do put explosives in the pressure cooker.

When I originally heard “pressure cooker” bomb, I assumed someone just rigged up the cooker itself to explode using the pressure itself by just sealing off the pressure release valve and letting it build up pressure until it exploded. But it appears instead they are just using the cooker as a larger version of a pipe bomb.

[toolman1401]

The failed 2010 Times Square SUV attempt used a similar device.