I thought i had seen most of the stpudity or paranoia that is conducted in the States, but recent news bulletins from the BBC World Service are indicating that four major american airlines are being sued for throwing people off aircraft who were posing NO security risk, and in at least one case had actually been checked and approved by airport security staff.
They all had one thing in common, they were either Arabic in origin, Arabic names or appeared to be Muslim. Hell, one of them even worked for the American Secret Service.
The question here, is this paranoia, outright and unforgivable stupidity or a rising of previously hidden discriminatory feelings against the Arab / Muslim communities ?
The so called “Land of the Free” is very far from being just that !
Yes, incidents of racial profiling do happen - an yes, it’s ridiculous. Does this mean that Arab and Muslim Americans are shaking with fear of the mob in their homes? No - The fact is that the feared Anti-Arab backlash… just never materialized. You might see reports of incidents, but that’s what they are - isolated incidents.
Even while the government issues warnings every week about the next, inevitable attack - and it’s likeliness to be even more leathal - amazingly - people are remaining calm, and not lashing out in blind racist rage.
What you probably don’t see over in Taiwan, are the reports of the ridiculous things that happen to non-Arabs at airports, too. One example - A famous comedian was on (American) CNN the other day telling about how his wife was detained at the security check point and virtually strip searched. When the guy raised an objection - a National guardsman leveled an M16 on him - when he complained about this he was detained and then questioned by the FBI. In the end the FBI decided not to press charges against him!
Just about everyone who travels regularly has an airport story. Even in the little country town where my parents live - at their tiny airport they have two gun toting soliders on duty [we haven’t had this since WWII!]. When my Sister and her 8 year old son flew out of there recently - the national guardsmen had both of their bags opened and stuff out on the floor, and they patted down both she and the bairn.
Paranoid… perhaps - but just think about what you guys in the UK have had to deal with for decades and mulitply that by an extreme factor of X, and you get the new reality in the States. Can you imagine what the reaction in the UK would be if the events of 911 had been on British soil?!
To be honest - seems as if you are engaging in some fairly gratuitous Yank bashing here, mate.
As it happens i am merely playing devils advocate, rather than Yank bashing, but certainly the UK has had its share of terrorism, maybe not with the loss of life within a single incident, but more than enough over the years.
As Juba correctly says, Lockerbie is in the UK, all of the years with the IRA using targets in the UK. I was only 150 metres away when the bomb in the centre of Manchester went off.
But all of this has happened without people targeting others who happen to be of a certain race or religion, this is where paranoia sets in.
In at least one of the cases it was the other passengers that forced the airlines to remove the people concerned. As was reported in one case the person worked for the US secret service, if Uncle Sam can trust him then i am sure that the ordinary people should as well.
What i find interesting that the first American to respond automatically assumed i was Yank bashing.
First of all racial profiling against the Irish in England would be a bit more difficult than against Arabs in America. I’ll let you guess why.
Second our country is hearing reports of threats daily. Try and put yourself in the shoes of the security agents for a bit. Racial profiling exists for what purpose you may ask? Well if you know that 100% of the threat comes from a certain race it is more efficient to profile. Regardless, most Americans of all races have to go through absolutely absurd screening at the airports now anyways. You conviently do not mention that. Personally I’ve had my car searched by people and dogs as well as submitting to a pat down type search of my person. I WAS JUST PICKING UP MY WIFE FROM THE AIRPORT. Not only that but it’s a tiny little nothing of an airport too. I am white and generally very well dressed btw.
Doesn’t bother me. Why? We hear reports of people wanting to do everything from poison the water supply to hijack another plane and hit more targets. What would your government do if it was a 100% fact that a small amount of aboriginal Taiwanese were terrorists. They had killed 4,000 people in Taipei and were planning more attacks. Do you think your government would do a better job? Oh yeah America is a tab bit larger country isn’t it? So multiple the job x 100 and give me your opinion.
I’m not trying to pick fights but it isn’t pleasant to be in the situation America is in. What is the right answer? How much is too much and when is it not enough? Ask any of the 400,000,000 Americans their viewpoints and I’d bet you’d get 400,000,000 different answers. Democracy is a compromise government by nature.
You are complaining about a compromise type policy.
Millions of Americans think just like you. Millions of Americans want MUCH stricter profiling. Myself, I’m happy with the compromise.
I think having a couple of jets fly into the tallest buildings in New York… plus a string of reports of planned attacks on bridges… department stores (at Christmas) … idiots trying to ignite shoe bombs…and fears over suicide bombing and possibly nuclear explosions in major cities… I think all this allows you to be a bit paranoid.
It only happened 8 or 9 months ago.
The UK has had decades (well almost a century) to get used to terrorism.
It may be an overreaction… and it may seem like a flagrant abuse of some individuals’ human rights…
But somehow, something inside me says its justifiable for the US to be a bit scared.
The IRA’s terror campagin during the last three decades has been significantly different than the way that Bin Ladan & Co. have chosen to do things. What the IRA has done has been horiffic and reprehensible, but the acts were carefully executed to gain maximum publicity with a minimum of loss of (civilian) life. They have killed innocents overtly and inovertly - but never with the full indescrimiate disdain for life that we see now.
I don’t mean to belittle at all what the British people have had to endure, and I’m well aware that the PanAm plane went down on British soil. The way the British authorities have responded is by stationing the army in N. Ireland and using the security services to monitor all kinds of people. We in America are now, finally, having to deal with the same mess that Europeans have dealt with for a long time. The new elements are the complete willingness to target civilians, and the virtually inevitable use of weapons of mass destruction. As America’s closest ally, and as a current “occupier” of Afghanistan - Britain, too, puts itself in the line of fire.
Perhaps the "paranoia’ that you attribute to us will be yours as well, as events unfold.
As for the yank bashing both good natured and not… Frankly speaking, it’s pretty much the norm from Europeans - any American who travels knows exactally what I’m talking about.
I’m an American so not a professional Yank basher but here goes:
Our friend writes:
quote[quote] Well if you know that 100% of the threat comes from a certain race it is more efficient to profile. [/quote]
Ever heard of Timothy McVeigh? Or what about the more pertinent case of the American gentleman who was placing pipe bombs in mailboxes across the midwest and west. Apparently, the cops let him through a number of times with slaps on the wrist. I guess if he’d been an innocent Arab in the vicinity… well who knows? Point being, obviously it is not 100% of the threat.
Put it this way, what if after the Oklahoma bombing and the Atlanta Olympics bombing, all white guys got pulled over by customs and maybe even strip searched with no recourse to the law. What if you got stopped seven times by cops on a five mile drive (and you were supposed to meet a first date 45 minutes earlier)? Your mail, e-mail and phone conversations were monitored just because a couple of whacko white guys decided to blow things up?
I have two very good friends, one from Pakistan and another from Iran who have lived the American dream. They married white women (gasp!) And they both have made a fair amount of money. I have spoken to Hamid since Sept. 11, and he has since then been pulled over by the police, interviewed by the FBI and found that many of his coworkers are not quite as cordial as they used to be. But to give him credit, he went through all of this myopic American fear crap back in 1979. And in his income bracket, I dare say he’s probably put more on the table for the US federal government than most of us could dream. And that’s what you advocate for guys like him?
It’s easy to make these rationalizations when you are not the target. Ask the Jews in Warsaw before WWII or the Palestinians who are trying to make a living after 4hrs at check point both ways in a day or ask the Japanese Americans during the last great war.
Oh yeah, and the intelligence agencies have figured out that Mr. Anthrax comes from a US military lab, but they don’t talk about that too much.
You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Either give up the premise that your ideas are moral and say F#$K it, I don’t care as long as we get the bastards, or try, on the other hand, of letting the law (not John Ashcroft style) do its work. It’s your choice but don’t pretend to be righteous and then denigrate an entire people. Won’t work, Can’t happen, Suan le ba.
quote[quote]Racial profiling exists for what purpose you may ask? Well if you know that 100% of the threat comes from a certain race it is more efficient to profile. Regardless, most Americans of all races have to go through absolutely absurd screening at the airports now anyways. You conviently do not mention that. Personally I've had my car searched by people and dogs as well as submitting to a pat down type search of my person. I WAS JUST PICKING UP MY WIFE FROM THE AIRPORT. Not only that but it's a tiny little nothing of an airport too. I am white and generally very well dressed btw. [/quote]
So what was your point again?
quote: You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Either give up the premise that your ideas are moral and say F#$K it, I don't care as long as we get the bastards, or try, on the other hand, of letting the law (not John Ashcroft style) do its work. It's your choice but don't pretend to be righteous and then denigrate an entire people. Won't work, Can't happen, Suan le ba.
Well the choice isn't made by me personally but thanks for the advice. I'll pass it on. Can you point out a policy that has worked over a 10 year span without harming a single person's "feelings"? How about a one year span? Your friends sound like they would rather have the benefits of American lifestyle than the true freedom of being unbothered by obvious racism. Perhaps there is no racism where they are from?
Nowhere is perfect pal, and on that you can depend...BUT I do not rail on Taiwan EVER. Why?
I do not live there and would not have the proper perspective on the event in question.
I’m personally very torn about the profiling issue. There was an article in the New York Times today saying that Ashcroft is going to start finger-printing all visa holders from certain nations. Apparently the law has been on the books since the 50’s but ceased being enforced in the 80’s. It actually allows finger-printing of all visa holders so Ashcroft doesn’t need anyone’s approval to do this.
Now leaving aside the question of whether the effort and resources might not be better spent filling all the holes in what the government was supposed to be doing all ready, and further leaving aside the fact that the sheer stupidity, shortsightedness, and incompetence of our “leaders” is one of our biggest security threats, what should we think about this?
Domestic terrorism is a different problem with different causes and different solutions. How should we handle foreign terrorism? On the one hand any sort of profiling strikes me as discriminatory and worng. On the other hand, it is simply a descriptive fact that not everyone is equally likely to be engaged in a terrorist plot against the US. When we give visas, should we screen Taiwanese as tightly as Saudis? My fiance just got a visa with multiple entries she didn’t even ask for with no documentation of anything, I would guess in large part because Taiwanese are ulikely to do anything more serious than try to sneak in some mangos (and who could blame them for that?).
How much of an infringement is asking for finger prints or for monitoring visa status (ie actually deporting people who overstay)? I’m not talking about police round-ups or detaining people. The idea that profiling at airports is a slippery slope doesn’t hold. The comparison to the Nazis is stupid and offensive. With a group that seeks to kill as many people as they can the costs of an error are very high. With limited resources, we can’t finger print everybody, we can’t screen everybody. So how should we allocate the resources? If you prioritize screening based on probability and you’ve got an Arab man, a White man, and a white little old lady, all other considerations aside, you’d screen them in that order.
This leaves me very uneasy, but it seems ridiculous to say that we should screen little old ladies from Georgia at an equal rate.
The FBI finally seem to have some idea of who the enemy is. According to a Reuters report yesterday, the FBI have identified the 911 mastermind.
He is
quote[quote] 37 or 38, is known to wear either a full beard or a trimmed beard, or he may be clean shaven and has been known to wear glasses, according to a description posted on the FBI’s Web site [/quote]
The US prosecutors have brazenly attempted to deny the civil rights of (another) US citizen whom was originally detained by the US military in Afghanistan and Cuba. The attempt and nature of this effort is troublesome and was disallowed by the US Court. This type of behavior is much more worse than any racial profiling of aliens or citizens in airports. Much is just so reminiscent of the past from the Chinese Exclusions in the late 1800’s to Red Scares of 1920’s and 1950’s. Finally clamping down is one thing after years of unregulated immigration policy, but many newer actions are too often half-baked implementations. The newspapers are full of growing abuses and the insaner ideas are another thing when the ulterior political motives are quite visible. Checks and balances of the system must hopefully restore or maintain the sanity of these excesses.
I think you have pointed out the difficult dilemma of all this.
Things like freedom of speech, right to due process, non-discrimination, etc., are not absolute priciples; they can be (and sometimes are) subordinated by compelling public interest, in this case national security.
The difficult question is how much we’re willing to sacrifice in the name of security. Clearly most Americans now see the detention of Japanese-Americans during WWII as a grave injustice. But at the time few felt that way.
Racial-profiling is clearly not as a serious invasion of civil liberties as forced detention, but still I wonder, one day in the future when all this is behind us (hopefully), will we still view the actions as justified by the threat we faced, or will we again see a shameful episode in American history?
Is the shame of our 20/20 hindsights going to be placed upon the sheer ignorance of the terrorist rights supporters in their loopy philosophies or upon the corruptible excesses of the (elected and unelected) US officials in power?
The majority of these posts just proves how much of an insulated and sheltered life you guys have in the States. Just because America leads such a sheltered life until now does not and cannot justify this discrimination that is going on, particularly as it comes close to bordering on racism.
Similar attitudes were present when the American Japanese were rounded up and put into camps as it was felt they COULD be a threat. What about the search for the Communists during the late 50’s i think.
Mwalimu, i suggest that you never go to Enniskillen in N. Ireland and say that the IRA never bombed indiscriminately. Their Remembrance Sunday bombing there was a total outrage that was aimed purely at the members of the public, it eventually cost them dearly as well as costing many lives.
Anjinsan, indeed you are correct in saying that profiling of the Irish would be more difficult, but at the same point there was no attempt to discriminate against them either. Nor do I suspect that the UK would react in such a petulant fashion as the US is had the 911 incident happened there instead of NY. Certainly the British people would not.
100% of the terrorism threat is not coming from Arabs, which is the point that Jellymister was trying to make. Look to Timothy McVeigh, and the fact that the Intelligence Agencies - what a misnomer - are now saying that the Anthrax used for the mail scares actually comes from a US Military Lab. There are plenty of White fundamentalists as well. Nor are all Muslims a threat either, just ask the reasonable number of Muslims within the African American population such as Mike Tyson, Muhammed Ali etc, are they a threat to National Security? What about the 200 million (approx) Muslims living in Indonesia, are they all to be considered a threat?
Yes America is larger but so are its resources, probably to an even greater factor as you guys are often wont to highlight.
Close 8,000+ miles of border? Oh that’s rich. America would now like to hire every single person living in Taiwan so that it may close the east coast border. More countries will be notified shortly as to which border they will close. As to my quote that keeps getting shortened in the interest of making points…how about this - 90-99% of the current terrorist threat is believed to be Muslim. (This part will not be quoted) → Regardless, we are locking down on all races/ages/religions so that we cannot be accused of racism. Items such as toenail clippers, magnifying glass, metal emery boards and other common non-lethal items are now being conviscated from innocents by the thousands now.
We are spending the so called limitless resources on tracking and randomly hassling 400,000,000 people 1/10,000th of their time instead of a few million people 80% of their time. (will not be included in quote) -->This is a widely mentioned/discussed fact not a statement of personal opinon on my behalf, ok? The worst part is in our hearts we know it is folly of the worst kind. There really isn’t much one can do on this kind of scale to prevent such an occurance. Perhaps you’d rather that we just did nothing? In reality it might make as much sense but more than a few million Americans would adamantly disagree I’m afraid.
Paranoia is a result of unfocused fear which is a result of a unrealisitc threat of violence that has been not proven to exist. ← read again please.
We are AFRAID not paranoid.
I was in Taiwan the summer when China decided to missle test off your coast. There was tremendous fear until we sent warships to soften the threat for you. Once that happened people started having less fear as a result. It unfortunately is not that simple to ease out fears as we can’t just target “country a” to eliminate the fear.
You keep pointing out what you do not like about the current policy but have yet to offer a WORKING solution to the problem. -->To eliminate MOST of the fear and not change the American way of life one iota?
quote[quote] Nor do I suspect that the UK would react in such a petulant fashion as the US is had the 911 incident happened there instead of NY. Certainly the British people would not. [/quote]
Well I’d guess you are British and omniscient then. Maybe you are from one of her former colonies? The ones that were run fairly in regards to race. Solving this wee little mess us silly Americans have gotten into should be no trouble at all for a gentleman such as yourself.
Sorry, taiwanstatus… I do not understand your posts at all.
The USA is fairly newto terrorism on its own soil… and it will take it a while to sort things out.
Until then, yes we are likely to have policies that sometimes overstep the mark. But the USA has to look at other democratic countries that have lived with terrorism… and the inescapable conclusion is that democracies are not very good at dealing with it. Dictatorships are.
Now… how far do you go to protect the individuals right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness??
If you can identify a particular group of people that are causing the problem… is racial profiling not a logical step???
Wasn’t there a Movie made about all this called “Under Siege” I think it stared Bruce Willis. All I can say is: where are you now Bruce? Your country needs you. He’d do a hell of a lot better job than Bush.
Bush would like to have us believe American Intelligence was the greatest oxymoron ever.
Why wouldn’t you think the Al-Queda were capable of flying airplanes into the World Trade Center? It was Asama’s stated mission. He’d attempted to blow it up once before. He’d already blown up two embassies in Africa and a ship in Yemen in the years previous. Tom Clancy had written about it as the terrorist plot for one of his best selling novels. If you believe the blurb on his books he lectures intelligence officers on how to think. Now as it turns out they had substantial intelligence leads indicating it was all about to happen. Bush knew and he is cynically manipulating us all for oil.
