David Davis
I have been wondering quietly to myself for a few days since Tuesday, and the news that a bloke deliberately locked his fellow Flying-Officer out of the cockpit and crashed the entire plane into a mountainside at the speed of an air-rifle bullet, about the strategic wisdom of measures taken by our supposed “leaders” in regard to what they call “The War On Terror”.
I will not make an anodyne speech about how “our thoughts are with the victims and their families” for
(a) they are anyway, and
(b) it’s anodyne corporate wallpaper when said in this way (you might just pray to God instead if it makes things better or at least less awful, and which you can) and
(c) all the Public-EnemyClass-GramscoFabiaNazis say this crap when they are trying to cover up something and they don’t mean it a toss anyway, being bad people a-priori; so they’ve devalued it. So I shan’t do it.
Now then, to The Main Business.
There can be no such thing as a “War On Terror”. How do you wage war against a tactic of war, or a “strategic objective”? You can only wage a war on the actual people that execute at least one of a range of different tactics or strategies.
It so far appears that the door to the cockpit of this sadly-doomed plane possessed locking devices strong enough to prevent breaching with an axe. In the wake of 9/11 this seems all very well, but doesn’t take account of probabilities far far higher than an armed hijack by pre-capitalist-barbarian nerds (you all know who there are) armed with stanley-knives. Such higher probabilities must, it seems, include pilots with mental problems serious enough to put their “fitness to fly” in question – regardless of the level of skills they have.
It appears that these locking devices could be commanded from inside the cockpit; and also then _not_ by a flight-deck officer outside it who could then not override them.
The obvious way round this problem, if our “masters” believe that armed air-hijacking is a real threat, and that there is actually what they call a “war on terror” (the need for such a war is indeed rather arguable doubtful) is to do one or else more of the following things, in light of the fact that it’s pretty hard to take, say a Bren Gun or other “medium machine gun” (or even a 0.5″ rifle) into the passenger compartment of an airliner:-
(1) Arm selected passengers. Choose _only_ Ethnic White Males from the Anglosphere Nations, who look fit but inconspicuous, and over the age of, let us say, 56 or 58 or 60 (they have “lived” and they “know all about the world”) who have had military training, or “look trustworthy”, and offer them a _loaded_ semi-automatic sidearm to carry on the plane, for a discount of $500 on their ticket price – plus a bonus offer on next flight. (Obviously the safety-catch would be “on”.)To be elected to the Roman Senate, you had to be over 55 I think, and have “done useful things” in your life, for people. Sean will corroborate this, or not, as it pleases him.
They have to deliver it then, this firearm, on arrival, unused – unless it was “fired for good reason” which they are duty-bound to explain to the Police. A short round-nosed or flat-nosed cartridge of rather large calibre such as 0.45″ 0r even 0.5″ with a reduced propellant-charge would minimise damage to the plane in the event of a “miss”, would certainly “stop” a hijacker (he’d fall gasping blood hopefully, even with a mere chest-wound or back-wound – more probable) so that he could be immobilised for a little time until everyone nearby sits on his head, and the plane’s repair costs would be nugatory compared to the insurance payouts and compensation in the event of a “full crash”. Oh, and the cockpit doors, if lockable should be breachable by firearms through the lock. By the time a terrorist with a gun has got going (even if he got one on board) a White Ethnic Male Passenger in his 60s will have shot the bastard through the chest with a square-ended round or slug.
(2) Alter the current protocols by which “certain passengers” are screened pre-flight. Stop overscreening “old white ladies from the Anglosphere” or of “non-ethnic whites”; I’d better not say more here for you know what’s coming next. Screen “certain others”, rather excessively well. Then, what will happen fast is that the global polarisation of debate that will assuredly ensue rather faster, and will originate from in particular the “United Nations” (one of our main enemies) and also from the PoliticalEnemyClasses of certain nations that have nuclear weapons and/or are trying to develop these, will help to isolate the real problem in despite of the efforts of Western White Ethnic GramscoFabiaNazi “multiculturalists”.
These latter, the WEGFaNs, twho are White and Anglospheric and not “ethnic” therefore as the term is defined, and really really very nasty people without a shred of ordinary morality, are the real buggers that want the rest of us dead actually. This is because they intellectually despise us, our culture, our aspirations and our public tastes for lovely exciting trivia that don’t matter and are good in themselves. This is to say; things like burgers-and-chips and good cars and big wall-tellies that do fun stuff, and scurrilous newspapers, and cheap flights to places where young people can afford to stay for a few days and get a good shag with people they’ve just met. These bastards try to use other pre-capitalist-barbarians (who sadly perhaps don’t know any better, yet – but will in time, to their own cost when they get dumped as “useful idiots”) as their catspaws, as I have often said earlier on this very blog.
(3) Retro-fit all passenger planes with ejectable seats and passenger parachutes. No airline wants its passengers – their customers, which is what they are – to die horribly while taking advantage of its product. This is a marketing axiom, I think, and would get you thgout business school perhaps on its own. I don’t know what a “business school” is, never having been inside one, but I have run businesses, and it’s probably bad to kill your paying punters.
But I think we’d have to call this one, above, “theory A”.
So, I think we’ll really have to implement (1) or (2). And open the cockpit doors again.
In July 1969, I flew to Lebanon on an “Alia” flight (Royal Jordanian Airlines, I remember, I think?) from London, via Rome, Istambul, Aman and to Beirut, on the same plane. The cockpit door was not locked, in fact there was no door as far as I remember, and at several times I knocked on the wall and was allowed by the driver to take photos through the front windows while we were landing at various places. As a student I thought this would be interesting, and the pilots indulged me, the gents that they were. I still have the Kodak transparencies somewhere in my library. At one point a woman in a niqab got out a petrol-stove and proceeded to cook something in the aisle of the plane. I think it was a “Caravelle”. I think it was mutton.
Any measure (for example “let us make the door stronger – so that people can not break in”) will not just have benefits – there will be costs, if only the costs of the more expensive door (and the fuel – because of the slightly higher weight). In the United States a pilot is never left on his own (in case he passes out – or goes mad), but that is another extra cost.
Private companies should be allowed to decide these matters – they can advertise accordingly (and there can be independent reports from consumer groups), and passengers should be free to choose.
They are discovering the thing well know to libertarians that every regulation creates more problems. What they’ve now found is that making a cockpit impregnable, while it can stop people who shouldn’t be in there getting in, also stops people who should be in there getting in.
So now they will insist on two pilots in the cockpit at all times, which will be fine until one overpowers the other. Or there is a pressure loss in the cockpit and nobody else can get in, as with the Athens crash already, in fact (everyone on the plane was out cold except one steward who could have flown the plane under instruction from ATC, but by the time he broke into the cockpit the fuel was exhausted).
Here’s a suggestion. A third pilot will be placed in an impregnable steel room with a door that cannot be unlocked while the plane is in flight, and he controls the cockpit door. In case he is in some way incapacitated, a fourth pilot will be placed in a…
Or perhaps the problem can be solved by “removing certain memes”. I would not care to say how that should be done, not on here anyway.
Perhaps we are getting nearer to the root of what “religion” is about, and what the problems are with “religions” whose belief-systems are artificially-very-very-strongly-held, for historico-cultural reasons. (This would be perhaps because at the time of their various pennings (or papyrus-scribings or “verbal-fatwahs” or whatever) there “wasn’t anything else that explained anything”.)
No science, you see. A tragedy of the first order, but there’s nothing to be done about that now, for we are where we are, and are stuck with it.
Or…we could have pilotless planes, driven by space-based-software, which “no-one can hack”. (I know what you are thinking now, Ian….)
It is indeed tragic – terrible, about 150 people died horribly.
However, one of Murphy’s laws of combat keeps occurring to me.
“Never make a position so heavily fortified that you can not get out of it” (the Masada mistake – and other times also).
And also never make a position so heavily fortified that people who should get into it can not.
Still the chances of another pilot going mad and keeping pressing the button (which has to be done every 30 seconds – or the door opens when the code is put in) to prevent the opening of the door, is incredibly low.
Hard cases (freak events – the random horror of the universe) make bad law.
Speaking as someone who has not only had military experience but actually gave weapons training to soldiers specifically in pistols (Browning HP) I can assure you that a rather higher standard of expertise is required before before you hand people guns to use under these circumstances. Hidden in your muddled idea is a sound one though…
It would require no change in the law for the Home Office to change its operational policy and start allowing the granting of Personal Protection Weapon permits. Then someone like me – who is in his fifties with military experience and extensive experience of owning personal handguns as a civilian – could get a PPW that could be deemed usable on a plane and take his own handgun, with frangible ammunition. There would have to be some international treaty shenanigans for that to fly though.
In general yes, LA should be pushing hard for self defence weapons and firearms ownership more generally. Also, in defence of life, liberty, and property the LA could be championing Castle Law – that would surely be newsworthy at various junctures.