Wednesday, August 16: Ann Coulter writes:
“What stopped last week’s terrorist attack was ethnic profiling. We don’t know the details of the British intelligence work that nabbed the 24 Muslims because The New York Times has not been able to obtain that classified information and publish it on its front page yet. But it is a fact that you could not catch 24 Muslim terrorists by surveilling everyone in Britain equally…Without the ethnic profiling going on outside of airports, no security procedure currently permissible inside airports would have prevented a terrorist attack that would have left thousands dead.”
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Note: It seems I have a book review for all occasions. I forgot to mention that I reviewed Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror, by Richard Miniter, who suggests an alternative to ethnic profiling.
I never thought random profiling and searches made much sense.
Since the people murdering and maiming others are overwhelmingly young men of Middle Eastern descent who also happen to be followers of Allah, isn’t it wiser, safer, smarter, and more efficient to keep a heavier eye on these types of individuals?
I may not have any fancy intelligence and covert training, but I’ve got a valuable tool called “common sense.”
Profiling young Middle Eastern men who may be Muslims will make a lot of people angry, including young Middle Eastern men who may be Muslims. But as long as global terrorism is dominated by young Middle Eastern men who happen to be Muslims, profiling young Middle Eastern men who may be Muslims seems to be in order.
That’s what the United Kingdom has decided to do, in addition to the usual kinds of profiling of course, such as behavioral pattern recognition and background checks.
Unfair? Probably. Illegal? No.
Things can go wrong. Innocent people will be embarrassed, inconvenienced and offended. But let’s be realistic, even if it’s unfair: It’s a waste of time and resources to pat down every passenger, including granny, go through every bag, and give the evil eye to every person walking through the airport gate. It is absolutely suicidal to ignore the ethnic and religious component of the so-called war on terror. Dupes.
Hypothetical: Over the past 10 years, numerous jewelry store robberies have been committed by mostly young white women who may belong to a cult that believes followers will become goddesses if they steal a certain number of diamonds for the cult leader. These women are difficult to catch because they tend to blend in with other shoppers and exhibit some weird mutant running ability (bionic woman-style). They dress, speak, and behave normally, but they’re almost always alone when committing the crime. Would it make more sense for jewelers and law enforcement to pay special attention to a black middle-aged couple browsing or a young white woman, alone, near the engagement ring counter?
See Google News for the latest profiling stories. (Be sure to hit “Refresh”)
Your thoughts?
Update: Justice Department to study Britain’s counterterrorism laws. And hopefully learn a life-saving thing or two. 
New-to-me blog: Homeland Security Watch. Hopefully, it’s not run by the goverment.
Later… Christian Beckner of Homeland Security Watch says, “No, I’m definitely not run by the government.”
Solid.
Karol Sheinin guest-blogging at MM links to a Guardian story that reports torture was used to foil the terror plot. Last year I wrote:
I believe exerting pressure on enemy combatants in order to extract information is sometimes necessary. What I mean by that carefully-worded statement is that yes, I “support” torture as a last resort method to save lives.
Still do.
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Around the blogosphere:
Maggie’s Farm: “It’s about time. If my sort of people were blowing things up, I would not mind a bit – it keeps everyone safer, including honest Moslems.”
Check out funnyman RightWingDuck’s sketch.
Infidel Bloggers Alliance makes a good point about Irish profiling (because of Irish Republican Army terrorism), Mary Katharine Ham, California Conservative, Wizbang, Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler, Riehl World View, Ace of Spades, Coalition of the Swilling, e-skojec.com…
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Hey, look at all those Swedes!
There you go again, La Shawn. Since when does common sense play a roll in terror/crime fighting when people’s feelings are on the line? Get your priorities straight! (sarcasm off)
As a conservative with a computer (cookies) and GPS and mail delivery and credit cards, I doubt that there is much more to be known about me than already resides in multiple data bases. So, what do I have to lose with a national ID card that has biometric information on it?
Part of the profiling solution involves speeding the good guys through.
LaShawn,
I wrote an interesting post on profiling.
It lists all the attacks from the past with a guess as to who is responsible..
Just a reminder. Guess who? Islamists!
ExP (Jack)
Feel free to post the link, Jack.
I would favor profiling Israelis as well since they have a long history of framing Muslims for their own terrorist attacks.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/lavon.html
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/fiveisraelis.html
Here’s one for you, John, just to keep you fair and balanced.
http://tinyurl.com/q5knp
I suggest they start with the profiling by handing each person an edible into the left hand, and requiring the person to then eat it – putting it into his/her mouth with the left hand. Person will then be required to sit for some period of time before the next phase…
Thanks, suek, I enjoy pontifications as much as the next person, but let’s deal in facts. It is a historical documented fact that Mossad agents were caught bombing a US installation in 1954 while trying to implicate Muslims. Fast forward to 2001, and there is startling evidence that suggests a Mossad team was caught in NJ celebrating the attacks on the WTC. The days of screaming “anti-Semite” in order to stifle criticism of Israel are over. Time to confront the truth that those in the Israeli government and intelligence apparatuses have a sordid history of manipulatively turning American sentiment against the Muslim world for their own benefit.
It isn’t profiling, it is being mildly observant.
Great, more moonbat conspiracy theories.
LaShawn, let’s think of profiling in an abstract way.
Anybody with doors on their house with deadbold locks profiles, do they not? We know there are crooks in the world, and they rob houses through openings, so we secure these openings with locked doors. Similarly, we know terrorists are out there, and we know that 100% of those utilizing airplanes as weapons were Muslim, so we secure our airport facilities against Muslim terrorists.
Sure, not everyone that comes to our homes is a crook, but with locked doors ALL crooks know they have obstacles to overcome. Sure, not all Muslims that go to airports are terrorists, but those that are realize they have obstacles to overcome (and for 5 years apparently it’s been successful)
“we know terrorists are out there, and we know that 100% of those utilizing airplanes as weapons were Muslim”
You do NOT know this, my friend. Tell me why the FBI has stated that it has no hard evidence linking Bin Laden to 9/11. If you have such evidence, please turn it over right away to the authorities.
John, where did they state this? And what do you say about the tapes in which OBL appears and claims AQ was behind 9/11? Or is that more work by Mossad?
Thanks for the IMAO link. As you can see, Ducky worked quite hard on that post.
One of these days we’ll have to fix the trackbacks.
#3 Heliotrope: National ID is redundant and unnecessary. Drivers license, passport, job ID tags, etc…we all have more than enough ID. Also, who’s in charge of inputting the info for national ID? An honest mistake or a deliberate act could really mess up a person’s life. Nope, national ID won’t solve a thing.
I do agree with you that it’d be good to have something that would allow regular, non-criminally-minded folks to move through the airport lines quickly, but I don’t know what that would be.
The “rational” reason for some random searches is that it makes it difficult for terrorists to game the system. If grandmas were never searched, terrorists could get grandmas to bring explosives on board aircraft (and leave explosives on board if one has trouble talking grandmas into suicide)
An optimal prevention strategy involves both a random element AND profiling (targeting middle eastern military age men)
The analogy of profiling black men, because they commit the most crime seems striking to me. Unfortunately, both inconvenience innocent people who fall into a group (back or Arab) through no fault of their own
“Israeli government and intelligence apparatuses have a sordid history of manipulatively turning American sentiment against the Muslim world for their own benefit. ”
Almost every government and intelligence apparatuses have a sordid history of manipulatively turning American sentiment against their enemies for their own benefit.
We’d better get un-politically correct real quick.
Frank J, By Ducky, were you referring to me? If so, let me assure you, that “abstract, not-to-serious” post of mine took very little literary brain power on my part. If it looks like I worked hard on that post, my condolences to you that something so simple impressed you.
Regards
Buck
Buck, he’s talking about his co-blogger at IMAO.com, RightWingDuck.
I linked to his sketch in the post:
http://www.imao.us/archives/006028.html – Admin
Toothpick, Bin Laden immediately said after the attacks that he was not responsible and that the true culprits could be found in the “government within the government”. The tapes have been shown to be fake, but this is never reported in the mainstream press.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osamatape.html
If people want to believe everything they hear on CNN and FOX News (two news outlets that so uncritically pushed the administration’s lies in advance of the Iraq war by the way), then that’s their prerogative. I don’t really care at this point. Just make sure you check under your bed for Muslim terrorists tonight, as that is what the administration wants you to do.
A friend of Egyptian ancestry (brown, with curly hair – probably some Black ancestry) was interrogated on the street when visiting a friend in Buenos Aires, Argentinal.
He was surprised at the intensity of interrogation, and thought he was being profiled.
He was. He was within shouting distance of a Jewish center where many Jews had been murdered by Hezbollah in the recent past.
>>Thanks, suek, I enjoy pontifications as much as the next person, but let’s deal in facts.>>
OK…facts. Just in case you didn’t read all the way through…
“The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.†Again, not only untrue, but impossible. On the other hand, because of the thought-blocking effects of political correctness, it seems as if people are incapable of making the banal observation that Islam is quite literally responsible for almost all of the wars in the world. As Samuel Huntington observed a few years back in his Clash of Civilizations–and this was eight years ago, before the horrors that have been unleashed since 9-11–Muslims were participants in twenty-six of fifty ethnopolitical conflicts, and two-thirds to three-quarters of intercivilizational wars: “They also have had a high propensity to resort to violence in international crises, employing it to resolve 76 crises out of a total of 142″ between 1928 and 1979.”
Would you dispute _these_ facts?
>>It is a historical documented fact that Mossad agents were caught bombing a US installation in 1954 while trying to implicate Muslims.>>
Cites, please.
John,
[Deleted] Your conspiracy theories are laughable at best. Its funny how you liberal [deleted] have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to come up with “terrorist†acts by groups other than muslims. And you have to look back decades. Since 9/11 muslims have committed more than 5,800 acts of terrorism worldwide. But keep peddling the claptrap that The Joooos™ are to be feared more.
Liberal [deleted] do you realize that all the conflicts on the globe are almost without exception caused by muslims that cannot get along with their neighbors or host countries? Or is this a Mossad conspiracy to make the Religion of Pieces look bad?
New to LBC? Don’t call other commenters names. Politicians and other idiots, OK. Fellow commenters and blog hostess, not OK. – Admin
New to LBC? Don’t call other commenters names. Politicians and other idiots, OK. Fellow commenters and blog hostess, not OK. – Admin
Understood.
I would just add that calling John a Jew-hater is not name-calling but a point of fact. But I will play by the rules here.
Karl Rove is the love child of the alien from Area 51 and Ayn Rand. I don’t need to prove that. Just take my word. We’ve all been blind to the eveeeel conspiracy, the truth of which has been covered up by Fox and CNN.
LaShawn, I have read your opinions on “diversity” which some feel is a great national problem in need of endless dialog. I quite agree with your opinions on the whole affair.
Can “diversity” sensitivity and “profiling” go hand in hand?
It must be crunch time for many: which do we value more, our “sensitive” side or our “sensible” side?
#26 RedBeard: Karl Rove is my brother?!?!?!?!?
Forget it. I’m done here, but let the record show that it was Apollyon who crudely insulted me for sharing a different opinion. Not once did I personally attack anybody on this site.
My first thought was why bother old ladies but then my wife, who has much more wisdom than I do, said that the terrorists could disguise themselves as old ladies in wheelchairs. We’ll never be completely safe from anything, but let’s do the best we can.
Thanks La Shawn,
Here is the link to my Profiling post:
http://expreacherman.wordpress.com/
I pray the country will wake up!!
ExP (Jack)
Karl Rove is the love child of the alien from Area 51 and Ayn Rand.
#26 Redbeard – Rove is actually the love child of Ann Coulter and Joe Lieberman. Bush is the love child of the Area 51 aliens (group sex) and Ayn Rand. Perhaps you did not get the latest issue of Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy Home Digest. It’s all there.
Get the conspiracy straight man! Remember to drool uncontrollably when you type. Climb your roof wearing nothing but a tinfoil cap and shriek “Re-elect Gore” at neighbors from your TV antenna. Otherwise you will give paranoia a bad name.
I did crudely insult you. I acknowledge that. However, I didn’t insult you for merely having a different opinion but rather for peddling your unsubstantiated anti-Israel/Jew-hating tripe.
Utter nonsense.
Same type of garbage you hear from the Middle East like Joooosâ„¢ make matzoa from the blood of paleostinians. Where do you get this drivel?
Provide a link to this other than from crackpot at whatreallyhappened. I highly doubt this ever occurred. For arguments sake lets say it’s true. You had to dig back over half a century to come up with your example. As far as Muslim terrorism you can look to just yesterday, and the day before, and before, and before…….. http://www.thereligionofpeace.com
uh huh.
What did the perpetrators have in common who flew passenger airliners into our buildings murdering thousands, bombed trains in London, Spain, India murdering hundreds, took children hostage in Beslan-Russia and murdered scores of them. Hopefully you only need one guess.
Apollyon, you showed your hand with your initial vulgar insults of me. I substantiated some of my claims with links to Mike Rivero’s whatreallyhappened.com site which you maligned because you don’t agree with the content. Mike Rivero’s site is very well acclaimed, just so you know. It’s become clear that your only response is to insult those that you disagree with. I don’t converse with people like you. Sorry. That’s my final post on this topic.
Come on LaShawn…
What if the targets were Black people? Would you still feel the same if all Black people would have to be looked at as targets and couldn’t travel without being shaken down, strip searched, watchlisted, treated as criminals, etc???
Keep in mind, the actual Terrorists/Extremists are a small slice of the Muslim community. (although there are plenty of sympathizers).
Blacks have been through this already…and you condone it for other people?
I do understand this from a safety point of view… I have experience in this industry… but i’m not sold on the idea of racial profiling as being THE ONLY thing determining who is stopped & searched. It has to be a combination of things that would lead up to “Probable Cause”.
The second problem with this approach is that it risks creating what we call tunnel vision… a vacuum that would allow other threats to be missed…while officials are distracted, concentrating on looking for who they think a terrorist is…based on physical characteristics.
Muslim extremists/Terrorists come in all shades (from very pale to very dark skinned)…. Some have Asian/Orient features…slanted eyes…. while others do not. Some have Muslim sir names, while others do not.
There will be a lot of Mexicans, East Indians, Bangalies, Canadians, and U.S. citizens caught up in the dragnet as a result of this kind of approach. And at the same time.. there will be some terrorists who will be missed if this approach is implemented.
Let’s not forget Timothy McVeigh, John Walker Lindh, Matt Hale, Richard Reed (and many many others)- terrorists or extremists who were caught over the years….but DO NOT have these targeted physical characteristics.
Then there is the problem of women being used.
Al Qaeda and other groups would love for the UK to switch to this approach. These terror groups would quickly adapt to it and would exploit the many weaknesses inherent in this idea.
This would serve two purposes for these groups.
#1. It would anger the Muslim community… vindicating and validating the terror groups propaganda…and increasing their pool of potential new recruits. And #2. It would create many more holes for them to exploit.
I mentioned women being used a moment ago…. I encourage you to research this…. Read about the “Black Widows” of Russia (Chechnya)… They have been able to take down several airliners. These women are brutal…some of the most ruthless terrorists in Asia/Europe. (Also research why they are so vicious).
The Palestinian extremists have also used women in the past to get by Israeli Security for Suicide bombings.
Al Qaeda has also looked at this idea as a method…
This new approach may be a feel good measure for people who don’t know much about security…but from a security point of view…. you will be less safe with this plan …..not more safe. It will just provide a false sense of security.
The comprehensive, blanket security is best. NOW I would concede this… that security officials should use more common sense (this is the real problem) when they are conducting their routine searches at airports and elsewhere. Everyone should have to adhere to the security measures… but “more emphasis” should be placed on those who would be more likely to be involved in terror activity. Spending too much time on wheelchair bound old ladies is not a very efficient use of time for a screening agent.
I used to run security checkpoints at the St. Louis Int’l Airport…and the rule of thumb for supervisors was to let common sense prevail in those kinds of situations.
That concept has been lost in recent years.
Also… the U.S. should increase the use of safe flyer programs… where special passes are issued to American citizens who have been vetted…background checked beforehand. They could then be allowed to enter an express line… decreasing the wait time for other passengers in the main line. Those steps would work better to speed up the lines and they could do so without compromising security.
Can’t buy it, LaShawn. Not just because I’m black, but mainly because if we did this, we’d alienate millions of Muslims.
So what, you reply. Think again. It’s vital that we get tips from decent Muslims if we’re to keep tabs on the evil ones. It seems that such a tip was a vital part of the UK’s success in nailing these freaks. Start profiling every Muslim-looking guy at the airport, and that kind of assistance will likely dry up.
If we must profile, our people should be looking for patterns of behavior, not ethnic appearance or surnames.
Holy Crimony!
I can break down the above diatribe by the Angry Independent in one sentence.
“What if the targets were Black people?”
You mean, what if black people were responsible for 9/11 and the London bombings and the Madrid bombings and training terrorists all over the world for decades and wanted the U.S. Israel wiped off the face of the planet and were willing to carry out suicide attacks to kill thousands of us?
Admittedly, it was a long sentence. Back to the subject at hand.
People have no problem being profiled every day. When you go to the supermarket and you receive a coupon upon checkout – you’ve just been profiled. When your Tivo records the World Basketball Championships because you recorded the World Cup and NBA – you’ve just been profiled. It happens dozens, if not hundreds, of times per day to anyone who has the least bit of contact with a modern information society.
What’s the #1 visually observable attribute that you would look for if you were searching for someone trying to hijack an airplane? Easy – you’d look for people trying to board airplanes! Therefore, when you attempt to board an airplane, you’ve subjected yourself to profiling already. Get used to it. There are a host of variables to use in a complex equation including age, gender, nationality, ethnicity, religion, pattern of travel, type of ticket, outward appearance and comport, etc. To attempt to limit ‘profiling’ is to ask people to limit using that intrinsic human heuristic problem-solving ability called ‘common sense’.
As for Muslims and terrorism, let’s have a lesson in the presentation of data and statistics. Here are two statements, which I believe are facts, about modern terrorism:
1. Most Muslims are not terrorists;
2. Most terrorists are Muslims.
How does the mainstream media present this data? If you want to hunt for terrorists, where would you look? A Buddhist Temple or a Mosque?
Here is what the Weekly Standard has to say:
weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/532dxbll.asp?pg=1\
OK, those in favor of profiling say “Aye”…
OK, how about this link?
link
I’ve been profiled. And I’m pretty much a Viking. But I have a fair sized beard which is, I think, what caused the searches.
So on one trip to Texas, I got searched three times on separate occasions.
Not fun its true, but necessary all the same.
And secondly, while I met La Shawn at Nashcon, I draw my conclusion mostly from her writing. She does not seem the sort of person who would object if blacks were profiled…if the chief unifying element in over 5,000 acts of terror was that the person responsible was a black person…I suspect that her response would be to urge the authorities on.
That would be my response if a bunch of Viking-genetic types were disgracing my good name by engaging in acts of terror (and lets not get into the whole reparations for the kidnapping of monks okay?
)
“Keep in mind, the actual Terrorists/Extremists are a small slice of the Muslim community.”
I think there are something like 100-200 million wahabbists and Iranian nutbar types.
Sure, that may only be 5% or so … but profiling would be real smart.
At the least, end “reverse profiling,” such as, for ex, the tsa rule that no more than two middle-eeastern-looking persons per flight can be pulled aside for questioning.
That’s just insane; what if terrorists were ever to organize into groups of three or more?
Lashawn is chosen.
” … the Israeli government and intelligence apparatuses have a sordid history of manipulatively turning American sentiment against the Muslim world for their own benefit.”
Comment by John
Muslims are doing a good enough job of turning American sentiment against them. Israelis don’t have to do a thing.
As for torture to extract information from terrorists, what are we supposed to do, be gentlemen with these thugs and let something terrible happen? As a last resort, yes it should be used. These same terrorists would use the same tactics and wouldn’t flinch one bit. When you think of a journalist who had his head cut off, of
what could have happened had these terrorists in Britain been able to go through with their plans to blow up several airplanes over the Atlantic…when you think of 9/11 … pulling out some fingernails to stop all this isn’t such a bad idea after all. Certainly less painful than the families of the victims of terror attacks would feel.
Profiling will not work, we have muslim mothers ready to blow with their babies.
These guys are evil and will use any means, maybe hide it in a british child or an old lady?
So I’d rather not scrap the scanning of old ladies, of course waiting 50 minutes to find out her denture is setting off the metal detector isn’t helpful either.
I didn’t read all of the posts, so forgive me if I repeat any thoughts. Random inspections are great, but look harder where the “most likely” culprit would be. It’s this simple: If you want to eliminate mosquitos, would you spray near the desert or near the water? The muslim community breeds hatred and preaches jihad. It is absolutely unforgivable to ignore that fact when lives are on the line.
Several weeks ago I took my mother to the airport for a flight. She is in a wheelchair and had to go through a special inspection. She wasn’t offended. I wasn’t offended. People’s feelings have to take a back seat to security.
‘Siyo Friends, there is only one question to ask, 1) Are you a Koran loving Muslim? If the answer is yes do not allow them into the country (USA).
There is no such thing as a ‘moderate’ anything.
Remove all mosques from our soil and send all Muslims (native born and/or immigrant) to the Islamic state of their choice. It’s the ROP the Koran is for Koranimals.
You may call me any name you wish, the left/right has a very long list to choose from. I’m a product of inter-racial marriage, so profiling – many admixtures get profiled from both directions (races), big deal get over it. Granny used to say, ‘… If you wear your feelings on your sleeve they’re easily brushed off.’ Bear
John, if you are going to give sources, do not give me that unsubstantiated tripe, please. I mean real sources (note the use of the plural). Arabs have been the major terrorists of the world since the 70’s, their only rivals being the IRA. With the IRA mostly disbanded, that leaves only the Muslim extremists. As for “alienating” Muslims by profiling, tough. Their “bretheren” are alienating me by wanting to wipe my religion and culture off the face of the earth.
As a white man, I was not personally offended when the FBI profiled the DC sniper as a white man. However, I was intellectually offended that they clung to this profile with very little basis.
I am fine with profiling…as long as they do it for a sound reason.
As an part Irishman, I think profilling Irish during the 80’s by the Brits was a very intelligent move. Little old ladies from Surrey weren’t the ones blowing things up.
National ID and Profiling:
I support National ID because of two reasons. First, identity theft is our fastest-growing crime and makes us vulnerable to illegal aliens using them and terrorism as well as the painful financial losses spread out over all Americans and even mote heavily on the 2 million victims who suffer long nightmarish efforts to get teir name back. Second, driver’s license is no longer good enough. Our “law enforcement heroes” are now demanding new electronic IDs for anyone entering or leaving America except Bush’s Open Borders illegals. Now this new ID to go to Canada or wherever – even cruise lines – possibly expanded to VIP treatment in airports – is going to cost 114.00. I just paid 92 dollars for a drivers license. Look – just make all States conform to a national ID Standard that is also good for travel to non-visa countries and make it all cost substantially under 200 bucks to drive or travel and people will overwhelmingly go for it
We should start profiling and make it well known that it is conditional on behavior. Police do indeed “profile” black youth in hoodies with “color” bandannas and certain sneaks in several cities based on crime involvement – even though many black males are innocent and angry about being stopped. And some have good cause because they have some LEOs that come with attitude, give no explaination, then walk away without the least effort to leave the guys with an impression the LEOs are only doing it for the good of the community. No doubt Muslims have similar encounters. If we profile, it should be done with respect and consideration and we should leave a path open to get people OUT of being profiled. Young blacks should consider the value of not being profiled if they and the rest of the community stop glorifying real gangsta thugs and treat them as pariahs and discourage others from hanging with them. The Muslim community could end all talk of profiling Tomorrow by having all the moderates rise up and demand the Saudi Wahabbi Mullahs be thrown out of the country and saying they will point radicals out and demand the severest penalties for any Muslim that commits Islamist terror.
I’m holding my breath waiting for the “moderate voice” of the vast number of people of the Religion of Peace to emerge. I’m very purple in appearance now.
All I’ver heard is “We of course deplore all terrorism BUT ___________________(list 101 excuses why it isn’t Muslims fault or duty to end it). And “What about Tim McViegh??” “Whites are no different than us!”
Well, besides McViegh targeting a single gov’t building for a specific grievance and no talk whatsoever of other right wingers lust for mass murder – in general – whites, blacks, Chinese, Jews, Hindi Indians, and all Christians have not been party to the last 50 or so airline plots and 95% of terror cases over the last 3 decades – Thats Muslims, Muslims, Muslims….not McVieghs, La Shawns, Quing-lis, Lopez’s, Father O’Learys or Vishnama Patels. Muslims. Radical male Muslims in 98% of those cases, all between the ages of 16 and 35.
Where to look is obvious despite Muslim protestations, and only they have the power to end all profiling talk or deeds.
I just posted a New York Times story about a school in New York City where only boys between the ages of 7 and 14 sit and chant the Koran for 8 hours a day, every day summers also. They learn nothing else during that period until they are done memorizing the whole Koran. Then they go back into the public schools.
The goal according to the instructors is to build a bridge between Muslim and American society and train Muslim leaders in all fields of work from medicine to politics. The sad thing is we no longer teach the Constitution in public school. So we’ll have a group of boys, future leaders, who have a strong belief in the Koran but know nothing of our American freedoms that gave them the right to study their religion.
That’s a recipe for disaster in this country. Profiling now for the current threats helps, but does little to prevent the bigger threat to our democracy in the future – the complete ignorance of our Constitution by them and our own citizens.
Here’s a link the story,
http://spunkyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-private-is-too-private.html
After the second (first?) major (>100,000 dead) WMD attack against a western city, will there be any muslims alive planetwide?
At some level, preventing a muslim WMD attack is a (vain?) attempt to avoid genociding them all.
And honestly, I’m not worried about nukes (needing country-level high-tech and unobtainium) … I’m concerned with bioweapons that can be cooked up by your average med/biochemist grad student, much less the educated-but-madrassa-brainwashed
scientists in Iran now.
1: Western morality does not allow us to withhold medical machinery from Iran, et al.
2: Medical knowledge has raced ahead of most people’s understanding of it due to the inherent exponential growth of biochem/genetic knowledge multiplied by the Moore’s law exponential growth curve of computational proteinology (The computational power applied to biomed-research and genetic or protein structure doubles about every 12 months (computer power doubles every 18 months … but these are added to (not replacing) the existing supercomputer infrastructure)).
3: We can (TODAY) create virii that are genetically tailored to a particular person’s cancer (trials have been ongoing for some time now) to kill ONLY thse cells. The exact same technique can be applied to making a virus that targets a specific ethnic group (Jews for example since Amhadinijad seems to be especially chipper today about neutralizing the Israeli nuclear “Samson-Option”). Since so many Jews have particular distinctive genetic characteristics, they can be targetted with a tailored virus that theoretically kills only them.
6a: Can it be done:
A reporter with no biology experience since high school is walked through doing genetic manipulation with ebay-equipment in under a week
“Biowar for Dummies”
http://paulboutin.weblogger.com/stories/storyReader$1439
* ‘Every hands-on gene hacker I polled during my project estimated they could synthesize smallpox in a month or two.’
* ‘Brent guesses he would need a couple million dollars to whip up a batch of smallpox from scratch. No need for state sponsors or stolen top-secret germ samples. “An advanced grad student could do it,†Brent says.’
* Here’s the genetic map for smallpox (and many other virii)
smallpox(variola)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=genome&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=Overview&list_uids=10477
* ‘Three years ago, Eckard Wimmer headed a team of researchers at SUNY Stony Brook that made live polio virus from scratch, part of a Defense Department project to prove the threat of synthetic bioweapons.’
* DNA synthesis is following a kind of accelerated Moore’s law—the faster and easier it gets, the faster and easier it gets. Last year, a group of researchers synthesized DNA strands of more than 300,000 base pairs—longer than the smallpox genome—using a method that eliminates most of the shake-and-bake lab steps I’d spent weeks learning.
* ‘Carlson designs custom proteins on a computer in his Seattle home. According to his calculations, if the current pace of biotech proceeds for another decade, cooking up a lethal bug will be as easy and cheap as building a Web site.’
4: The mousepox example … they created a weapon while trying to create a mouse contraceptive:
BBC fatal engineered-mouse-pox article
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/highlights/010117_mousepox.shtml
Biological Warfare news-archive on AU mouse-pox
http://www.zkea.com/archives/archive05002.html
The researchers, based in Canberra, Australia, were hoping to genetically engineer the mousepox virus to produce a contraceptive vaccine to control mouse populations.
When the genetically engineered mousepox was put into mice the mice simply died. The supposedly benign mousepox virus was discovered to have become a killer. And not only a killer, but a super-killer: 100% of the mice died. The scientists thought they might learn something useful about mouse contraception, but instead they had learned how to create a universally fatal virus. And this killer virus had been created via a very simple genetic manipulation, accessible to every country with a few PhD microbiologists.”
The result was widespread terror within the defense and medical community. If this technique could be used on a mouse virus, why not a human one? Smallpox and mousepox are very closely related. Would smallpox+IL-4 create a superpox? This is very likely. As one scientist said, “if some idiot put IL-4 into smallpox, they’d increase the lethality quite dramatically … I wouldn’t want to be the one to do this experiment.”
He won’t need to. Others have volunteered; no doubt this question is being answered right now in clandestine labs around the globe. The technology is easily accessible, the technique is published. All it takes now is intent and a modest lab. And, if this particular technique doesn’t work, perhaps another one will do the trick …
NOTE: Nature has an for-fee article on:
Common Cold Virus Combined With Polio
Nature: article on Polio+Common-Cold
http://www.nature.com/nsu/010524/010524-9.html
NOTE … these articles aren’t mentioning it, but I remember from the time: every mouse in the BUILDING died … rapidly, despite containment and attempts to save their lives. The building was (AFAICR) incinerated to prevent further spread.
From an article on 2002’s vaccination of US troops vs Iraqi upgraded-Smallpox:
Center for Defense Information article on Iraqi smallpox
http://web.archive.org/web/20040515015507/cdi.org/terrorism/smallpox_vaccine.cfm
“According to biologists, growing and maintaining the smallpox virus would not be difficult for Iraq, a country that admitted in 1995 to pursuing a clandestine biological weapons program. A year earlier, UN inspectors examining Iraqi medical facilities uncovered an industrial-sized freeze dryer, the type used by microbiologists to extend the life of germ samples. It was labeled in Arabic �smallpox machine.� Iraqi officials claimed the freeze dryer was meant for the smallpox vaccine, not the virus.
Nevertheless, many former UN biological weapons inspectors in Iraq, including Richard Butler, are seriously concerned about the likelihood that Iraq has smallpox, possibly in weaponized form. ”
My conclusion: we cannot stop gene-manipulating medical hardware, information, and methods from reaching Iran, Syria, etc, therefore we must change the Middle-East armageddonist/Wahibbi/”Twelver” anti-Jew/EU mindset ASAP before they screw up and launch an anti-Jew version of ebola/smallpox that evolves/genetically shifts to be fatal to all of Homo Sapiens worldwide.
Note: formula for a Russian bioweapon: insert a modified ebola genetic map into slightly boosted non-deadly airborne-contagious streptococcus or staphlococcus bacteria … the ebola-modification is the awful bit … it comes out of dormancy upon triggering by various anti-biotics OR with a genetically-weak blocker-sequence (meaning that the blocker will tend to mutate into uselessness after N replication-generations … in other words a genetic time-delay-fuse).
Profiling can range from quite sensible to out and out harassment. Torture on the other hand seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to terrorism. Lets not forget that the Spanish Inquisition had a 100% success rate outing heretics. Torture victims will ALWAYS confess something. Our system was designed to avoid lynch mob justice, why do so many feel that after 250 years it is suddenly inadequate?
I am afraid it is getting to a point of no return. For some reason the worlds governments a blind or afraid of the Muslim world. Just like they were of Hitler. There are so many liberals running things in this and other countries Like the courts and the UN that common sense is no longer an effective tool to fight the sick Muslin world. Yes I said sick because once they start to read the Koran they all interpret and twist it to their owns evil beliefs.
It is shocking to hear people out there that hear what the leaders of Iran and Syria say on a daily basis and still refuse to see a threat. And now Iran will have nuclear weapons in the next two years This is a fact even thou the liberal fool are to blind to see this. How many times do the Muslims have to attack us or Israel for them to see the truth.
Duane – Torture on the other hand seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to terrorism. Lets not forget that the Spanish Inquisition had a 100% success rate outing heretics. Torture victims will ALWAYS confess something. Our system was designed to avoid lynch mob justice, why do so many feel that after 250 years it is suddenly inadequate?
You live in a civilian world Duane. Where it is wrong to kill an innocent man.
Many civilians simply cannot mentally grasp a separate reaity of humankind – warfare – where soldiers or former soldiers like me kill innocent men as our job, and morally hold our heads up. Kill any innocent women and children and little puppy dogs to if they have the misfortune to be on the wrong bridge or target at the wrong time. In war, there are certain rights co-signing nations agree to give. We also signed a noble treaty some years back agreeing to outlaw torture. Similar agreements exist to end genocide, world hunger, racism, sexism. We recognize in war that the Constitution permits suspension of habeas and Article III Courts, if declared by the Executive, hopefully backed by Congress.
Every investigator and lawyer knows the most important tool a liar and criminal has to block disclosing details of a criminal act is the 5th. In wartime the most potent tool the enemy has to avoid revealing intelligence is the Ill-informed, ill-educated US citizen’s presumption that enemies are no different than criminals – a mindset encouraged by the Left and NYC ACLU types.
Unless we are cosigned to Geneva with the enemy’s country, and grant POW status, we have a right to question terrorists outside Geneva. They do not have a right to silence beyond what blubbering liberal Democrats and Euroweenies and the “angry Muslim community” demand.
The myth that ill-informed Americans have of a single story from a single informant or suspect fooling guillable counter-terror operatives is generally not true. Because we generally interrogate several supects with common knowledge and cetain unique knowledge – the truth is constant in stories, but lies cause variance when the story is repeated over time or especially in cross-checking other terrorist’s stories. “Whatever comes out of their mouths” is not automatically believed. And from 5,000 years of practice, coerced interrogation even leading to torture, generally gets to the truth.
“Experts” testifying for liberal Congressmen are generally of the belief that HUMINT can be odious, dirty…we can absorb a certain acceptable amount of American deaths, well above WTC levels, without playing dirty ourselves so later generations will see how good and pure we were and accepted many deaths rather than “be like our enemy”. They also hope satellites and other technology will bypass having to deal with terrorists themselves to stop terrorist activity. Of course they wont say what they believe publicly…only wear their “conscience and “higher morals” on their sleeves as they dance for Schumer, Durbin, Kennedy, Roth, Strosser of the ACLU and the Euroweenies..
In recognition of that historical truth, spy and terror networks are built on the assumption that even hardened, dedicated ideologues will break in a few days and betray the cell and activities.
If the Pakis or Filipinos or Indians or Jordanians or French or Israelis, etc. say they have several Islamofascists singing like birds and now telling the truth…you can have high confidence in their counter-terror intelligence.
I am no stranger to the idea of collateral damage, Israel catches hell for civilian deaths when taking out a Hezbollah stronghold but I understand the realities of war. Shooting an innocent person when doing house to house foot patrols is a long way from sending a suspect to Syria for torture. I can live with the threat of terrorism before I can live with the ethical vacuum that torture creates. The idea that the one torture session that saves lives is worth the hundreds or thousands that suffer needlessly is the biggest myth. That requires believing the authorities when they tell you they have “saved” you many times with their “classified” actions. “Trust me” is not the way our system works.
Duane –
You still don’t get it. What about a soldier makes them “not innocent”? What crime did the man in uniform who I will kill by reflex or with scant thought commit?
You seem to think that only one interrogation is going to render up life-saving information while the hundreds or thousands of other ones for everyone that yields info are “useless moral vacuums” or similar lefty/libertarian drivel. You neglect that militaries put huge resources into interrogations and some of their most intelligent officers instead of assigning them elsewhere to fill critical needs. Because from the dawn of time militaries know they get needed info from interogations and THAT is the critical need justifying staff and resources that could go elsewhere. And they do not go through hundreds or thousands of useless interrogations before they get the “one” who hasn’t resisted, “was” (ha! ha!) an “innocent enemy”, or wasn’t one of the Hollywood myth prisoners who “always outsmarts the other side’s best minds”.
Admit it. You position is purely grounded in your emotional prejudices, not by facts or logic.
Torture can never be justified. If someone has to resort to torture to get intelligence, they are incompetent.
I suggest you study methods developed by brigadier general David Irvine (Ret.) which are a kinder, gentler interrogation style: Legal under international military law, effective against the most stubborn enemy, and – above all – moral.
If I may suggest a hypothetical:
You are a British customs official during World War II. Three people are in your waiting room. One is a middle-aged white woman in a floral dress. Another is a Catholic nun. The third is a young, heavyset blond man with a Nazi armband, who peppers his conversation with words like “donnerblitzen!” and “judenfrei”(Jew-free).
Whom do you question and search the most?
Answer: The nun. The German was probably abused as a child, and is only expressing his natural anger at a world that doesn’t understand his genius, and anyway, nuns are suspicious.
OFF TOPIC (sort of)
Video of Congressional Hearing (Held in El Paso TX) on subject of Immigration.
Held by the House Judiciary Committee on August 17th
Rep. Sensenbrenner is crazy!
Link- Copy and Paste if needed
rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/im/im081706_immigration.rm
Another link… if you have trouble with the link above.
http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?z1=&PopupMenu_Name=Congress&CatCodePairs=Issue,C;
Angry said: “Rep. Sensenbrenner is crazy!”
Ummm…. could you elaborate on that just a tad, Angry?
Just the way that he behaves on the Immigration Issue. His phobia of Immigrants (especially Mexicans) is quite evident.
Also, he conducts his hearings like an autocrat….. not allowing visitors to even clap their hands or make a sound. He thinks he is on Capital Hill when he is in El Paso (a different culture).
His demeanor is awkward…rugged, and overbearing. He seems to talk at (or down to) people, rather than with people.
The Republicans, especially Sensenbrenner, are more concerned with putting on these Show Trial Hearings, to make it look like they are really working on the Immigration problem before the elections, when in reality, the Republicans have been ducking and dodging real, fundamental, enforceable, comprehensive changes in immigration policy.
Thank you Kuni for saying it simply, torture is always wrong. Chris, you think I am making an emotional decision but your rationale boils down to: If we don’t torture people, terrible things will happen. News flash…. when we torture people, terrible things ARE happening. Terrorists don’t use terrorism because it is their preferred method of getting things done, they do it because they feel powerless and they think their cause justifies the means. That should sound familiar, it is your justification exactly.
Angry, what is Sensenbrenner’s plan for stopping illegal immigration? What about that plan do you not like? What about it fails to address the problem?
The Guardian says that “sources” tell them that the information on the terrorist plot was gained by torture. What “sources”?
The terrorists are not dumb and they follow the media closely. They have proven very adept at manipulating the media for their own purposes.
It has been obvious for some time that “torture” is a hot button issue. Why wouldn’t they claim torture even if it had not occurred just to start the kind of frenzy that is going on now. We know they train their people to claim torture and abuse whether or not it happened, what makes it so certain that this is not another piece of disinformation.
They certainly won’t take anyone connected with the American or British governments at their word, why should they accept this information from an unknown “source” in Pakistan as the truth?
Of course it’s because it is something they want to believe.
Some people want to get all moralistic on us, such as Duane in #60.
“I can live with the threat of terrorism before I can live with the ethical vacuum that torture creates.”
How noble! Tell me Duane, have you explained to your family and especially your children (if you have any) that you would much rather see them dead or horribly mutilated than compromise your ethics by making a terrorist uncomfortable?
Or are you just certain that any deaths and suffering caused by allowing attacks to go undetected would be suffered by people that you don’t know?
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