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Muslims are required by their faith to pray to Mecca five times a day. There is nothing sinister or criminal about people peacefully carrying out the obligations of their faith. Airlines that single out praying Muslims and deny them flight privileges permanently are no different from the five-and-dime stores that once prevented blacks from eating at luncheonette counters. It is as unthinkable to ban praying Muslims from a flight, as it would be to deny boarding to a group of praying Hasidic Jews. Both sects engage in public group prayers. Both are exercising their constitutional rights as U.S. citizens. Persecution...

Israel, awaiting word of the fate of a captured soldier, marked the 30th anniversary Tuesday of its dramatic rescue of dozens of hostages frim hijacked plane in the African nation of Uganda.

NOTE: If you have security concerns,please respond with private message. Hijacking 4 airliners on 9/11 required a helluva lot of planning - especially as to "flight plans". It might have been "relatively simple" to hijack the planes ,and, since some of the hijackers had taken lessons,they could operate aircraft controls to some degree ; but how about the navigation? Think about it for a minute.You take over an aircraft,but cannot reliably predict how long the takeover efforts will require,and what your location will be when this occurs. You now have to change course and altitude precisely so you hit your...

Excerpt - Al Qaeda terrorists were planning to use cameras to disguise bombs and flash attachments as stun guns in a disrupted hijack plot that targeted the U.S. east coast, Britain, Italy and Australia, U.S. officials say. The plot was one of three previously unknown al Qaeda hijack plots disrupted before they could be carried out, according to a Department of Homeland Security report obtained by ABC News. ~ snip ~

Hey! At least he's on our side!

Since 9/11, U.S. officials have struggled with how to protect the American public without infringing on individuals' rights and sensibilities. The touchiest issue of all is "profiling" — using various factors, including race or ethnicity, in security checks. So, it wasn't surprising that, when New York announced last week that it would begin screening passengers on the city's subway, officials promised loudly and insistently that the checks would be random and racial profiling would not be used. Such a policy avoids discrimination against certain ethnic groups — in effect, inconveniencing, embarrassing and perhaps even punishing individuals for crimes they did...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

REVERED by Palestinians as a hero and reviled by Israelis as a murdering terrorist, Yasser Arafat waged an unrelenting, decades-long battle for an independent state.[snip] With Syrian help, Arafat became so powerful that he challenged King Hussein during a civil war known as "Black September." But Hussein expelled Arafat in a bloody confrontation and he moved to Lebanon. In exile, Arafat's PLO carried out a series of dramatic attacks, including airplane hijackings and the slaying of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Yet Arafat managed to convince world leaders he was a nationalist who had been forced...

DAY OF INFAMY 2001 - Official: Kerry failed to act on pre-9/11 tip 3rd agent to say he warned security lapses made Boston airport ripe for 'jihad' attack Posted: March 19, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern By Paul Sperry © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com WASHINGTON – A third federal aviation-security agent, one still with the government, has stepped forward to say he also warned Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry about security lapses at Boston's Logan International Airport before the 9-11 hijackings there. Earlier this week, two former FAA agents said the Democratic presidential hopeful failed to take effective action after they gave him a...

<p>Washington, Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The FBI is investigating whether terrorists plotted to seize more than the four jetliners commandeered last week for deadly attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said.</p> <p>The U.S. is broadening the largest criminal investigation in FBI history and is concerned about further attacks, he said. Authorities have detained 75 people on immigration charges, up from 49 as of yesterday, and investigators believe associates of the 19 hijackers may still be in the U.S. The FBI has received more than 96,000 tips, including many that are redundant or contradictory, Ashcroft said.</p>

CBS news reported that one of the planes that crashed took off with a hijacker posing as a "deadheading" pilot sitting in the cockpit jumpseat.There are reporting that 12 MORE PLANES, grounded by the FAA blanket shutdown, were also on the ground taxiing with ARABS riding in the jumpseat!

Germany's Cabinet on Wednesday approved measures to allow the military to shoot down hijacked airliners over German airspace that are deemed to pose a threat. The bill leaves the decision to act with the federal government, not the military, under an agreement reached after weeks of talks between Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's governing Social Democrats and their junior partner, the Greens. Under the proposal, which requires parliamentary approval, the defense minister or a Cabinet-appointed deputy can decide to have the plane shot down "as a last resort." The aircraft would have to pose an immediate danger in German airspace, directly threaten...

U.S. officials said yesterday that they have learned of credible threats of possible new airline suicide hijackings by terrorists planned for the latter part of the summer. The information was developed in recent interviews with one or more high-level al Qaeda captives and corroborated separately by other means, including electronic intercepts, officials said. They described the possible scenarios as similar to the hijackings of four U.S. airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, that were crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in western Pennsylvania.

WASHINGTON -- Since the Sept. 11 hijackings, an FBI lab here has been compiling a database of easily concealable knives -- including long, fixed blades hidden in canes, retractable short blades hidden in keys and lipstick tubes, and others made of nonmetal composites that can escape detection by airport magnetometers and X-ray machines. Most of the nearly 90 samples photographed in the extensive database of concealable weapons are commercially available for less than $20, the FBI says. "These knives should be treated as potentially dangerous weapons," warns the "FBI Guide to Concealable Weapons 2003." The booklet, put together by the...

Anti-piracy experts warn terror groups may target ships with chemical cargo next in the Straits of Malacca KUALA LUMPUR - A spate of attacks by pirates armed with automatic weapons has heightened concern about the possibility of terrorists hijacking chemical tankers sailing in Indonesian waters. There have been three attacks in the past month and seafarers have registered a dramatic increase in piracy in the region since the start of the US-led war against Iraq. 'We cannot rule out this possibility. Hijacked ships could be used by terrorists,' Malaysian marine police chief Muhammad Muda said yesterday. But he was quick...

1999 Study Said Hijack-Suicides Possible WASHINGTON (AP) - Two years before the Sept. 11 attacks, an analysis prepared for U.S. intelligence warned that Osama bin Laden's terrorists could hijack an airliner and fly it into government buildings like the Pentagon. ``Suicide bomber(s) belonging to al-Qaida's Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives (C-4 and semtex) into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House,'' the September 1999 report said. The Bush administration has asserted that no one in government had envisioned a suicide hijacking before it happened. White House press secretary...

Federal Aviation Agency 800 Independence Avenue S.W. Washington D.C. 20591 Dear Sirs; I have the solution for the prevention of hijackings, and at the same time getting our airline industry back on its feet. Since men of the Muslim religion are not allowed to look at naked women we should replace all of our female flight attendants with strippers. Muslims would be afraid to get on the planes for fear of seeing a naked woman, and of course, everyone in this country would start flying again in hopes of seeing a naked woman. We would have no more hijackings,...