Why profiling is essential

Nicholas

Chakrabati's comment highlights one of the problems. That we have entered an era where the need to demonstrate that minorities are not being discriminated against takes precedence over the rights of the majority not to be inconvenienced. Majority needs are still cited when it suits the "liberal" (draconian) agenda (e.g. Hoon's "the public have the right not to be blown up by terrorists" - they don't actually, that is all about risk and no more valid than saying people have the right not to be involved in traffic accidents they have not caused) but switched off when there is a danger of offending one of the treasured "victim"/"minority" groups. It is this double-think and inconsistency that is so irksome to those with common-sense. Ironically, the fear of offending seems more directed towards the "liberal narrative" for want of a better phrase than the groups identified by it.

The "liberal narrative" sees no problem in offending white, English, male, middle-class, Christian and right or right of centre groups and does so constantly with its partisan legislation, regulation and commentary.

Above all we need honesty, objectivity and common-sense. And the courage to let the hair-trigger offence merchants scream, shout and stamp their feet without pandering to them.

Austin Barry

Shami Chakrabati warns:

"Any response to terrorism has to be proportionate and respectful of the human rights values of dignity, privacy and liberty that governments on both sides of the Atlantic have been all too easily tempted to ignore.”

Shami does rather forget the human right to life, doesn't she? But, between her self-regarding, self-promoting and emetic appearances on TV, I guess she has to say what her chums in the Notting Hill, Hampstead and Islington crescent of appeasement expect to hear.

Mark Montgomery

We've been working for many years in an attempt to provide better systems to the U.S. Government that cut to the very core of the challenges we face as a nation -- innovation and competitiveness, crises prevention, and continual improvement. Our biggest challenge is not in reaching decision makers -- the WH was all over our site recently and I have had many discussions with agency heads and members of Congress, but rather the lack of pressure from media.

We have political columnists who gain most of the attention, but they don't understand much if anything about the actual multi-disciplinary challenge -- we have had nothing but support from leading scientists in related fields, including within the government, but our culture is so reliant on the very institutions that have failed for information that it's increasingly difficult to gain any kind of exposure.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Systemic failure requires new holistic cure
http://kyield.wordpress.com/2009/12/30/systemic-failure-requires-new-holistic-cure/

How to prevent the Fort Hood tragedy, by design.
http://kyield.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/preventing-the-next-fort-hood-tragedy-by-design/

Another paper written in laymen's language is a use case scenario developed specifically for the DHS:
http://www.kyield.com/images/SCENARIO_3-_Roger_the_maintenance_man_at_the_hydro_dam.pdf

thomas

Ms Chakrabai's words support the policy of profiling: the proposed full-body scanners are an outrageous invasion of privacy. Having said that, the most recent bomber was African in descent, as have been other Muslim terrorists. Can we really have all black Brits subjected to extra checks at the airport?

Verity

Shami Chakrabati - Oh, shut up! Shut up! Shut up! Just for once, fail to make a comment.

Blowing up planes is not executed by the militant wing of the Little Sisters of Mercy who have "misunderstood" the Christian message, rogue members of the Women's Institute in lieu of posing for a naked calendar this year, or the Yorkshire Greyhound Racers' Association, if there is one.

It's done by Muslims. One hundred percent.

They are working in the service of allah, who prescribes this level of militancy very clearly in the q'ran.

If the bombs were being 100% planted by blondes with blue eyes, I guarantee you that no blondes with blue eyes would be flying.

Every government that does not rigorously profile Muslims is a traitor. There is innocent blood on their hands through the agency of giving the most dangerous, toxic group of people in the world a free pass.

And let me whisper a word in the shell-likes of fatty Brown and stringy Obama, the Muslims who aren't raving loonies don't want to die in bombed planes either! Honestly! They are perfectly capable of understanding the reasons for profiling. No need to condescend to them.

Taghairm

Mr Blackburn disingenuously tells us that
"the overwhelming majority of global terrorism is committed by radical Muslims". I suppose this might be true if one doesn't include bombing from aircraft, killing by drone, and all the incidental terror spread by illegal invasion.
Yes, if we disinclude ourselves then it is certainly the others!

Mitch

Surely in any commonsense world Muslims would be searched much more frequently and this inconvenience would lead to social pressure to stop the loony fringe gaining power and influence .
Until someone in authority grows a pair and really addresses the real problem lots more 70yr old grannies will get searched and humiliated at airports to no advantage except to the terrorists.

Chris

Taghairm, please disinclude yourself by all means. Your 'thoughts' are not required.

Simon

I dont often disagree with you but profiling would cause more problems that it solved. It would be exploited by radicals to widen their support. If you accept the arguments for profiling you must support ID cards and keeping the dna of the innocent too. The arguements in suppport as exactly the same. This is the sort of thoughtess populist stuff one would expect from your editor. You can do better!

Colin

One of the most irritating inconveniences visited upon us as a result of, among other things, islamic terrorism, is that we are forced to endure the spectacle of the media giving air time to the likes of Shami "Chatshow" Chakrabati.

The sight and sound of this self promoting, fat cat, celebrity, parasite barrister with her ala carte approach to human rights and liberty is almost vomit inducing. If she was even mildly consistent and balanced, I could just about stomach her.

George J

@Taghairm
and your comment, my friend, is a typical example of muslim rationalization. Never an unqualified word of condemnation for your bloody jihadists. It's always accompanied by some justification - Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, colonialization, racism, oppression, the crusades, western decadence, historical christian persecution.

Go back to your mosque and kick out your foreign educated immams and get one who has some remote understanding of life in the twenty first century.

Austin Barry

Just after Christmas at Stanstead airport my wife's 85-year-old, hideously white aunt was led away and strip-searched after her back-brace corset set-off the air-side check-in alarm. Why?

Taipei Exile

"A truth yet to be universally aknowledged." Anyone who hasn't aknowledged this truth is a moron. Oh wait a minute, we're talking about the usual suspects here aren't we? It's been pretty apparent to anyone with half a brain for years that (radical)muslims are the cause of most acts of terrorism. Good to see Shami rent-a-quote failing to grasp the situation as usual. Still, at least she's not missed a chance to get herself back in the limelight. Surprised she hasn't got a deal with Clifford.

Vulture

If you were wedged on an airliner between (say) an elderly Swedish Lutheran in a cassock and a man with a beard, long robes and a macramee skullcap, who would you expect to start fiddling with their undies?

Even if you were the most bleeding heart leftie liberal you would go for the macramee man wouldn't you?

So we all mentally 'profile' people already : ostentatiously dressed Muslims often miraculously have seats free around them on crowded Tube trains.

We don't need another sodding 'review': we need action. The first duty of Government is to protect people. Whatever the costs, the security methods of El Al should be adopted: they profile like hell, and suspect people just don't fly. In case they miss on the ground, every flight also has armed marshals aboard. Needless to say, El Al has never lost a plane. They know what our political elite deny : we are at war.

Edward Sutherland

Mr Blackburn: you're right, profiling has to brought in otherwise travel will become impossible. Arriving at Boston airport in '07 for a family holiday two of my young sons were required to go through extra security, presumably to satisfy some PC quota.Ditto

HairyNoddy

Taghernia - I very much doubt that you are right. The death toll of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has been significantly increased by muslim 'insurgents' blowing up other muslims.

Edward Sutherland

Mr Blackburn: you're right profiling must be brought in or travel will become impossible.Arriving at Boston airport for a family holiday in '07, my two youngest teenage sons were put through extra security, presumably for some PC quota need. My oldest son has had to empty his suitcase at Waterloo stn so that police could meet their quota of white Caucasians.

Woody

Can someone tell me if women in burkhas are going to be exempt from entering these body scanners?

Snowman

Keep on dreaming, David. The Pope will convert to paganism before the Government musters the courage to bring in profiling. Nicholas spells out the reasons well.

Isn’t it laughably dispiriting that a failed attempt of one man to ignite a pair of explosive soaked underpants can bring the entire world to a near standstill? Or, that the might of the armed forces of the richest nation on the planet cannot defeat a bunch of turban wearing fruitcakes equipped with nothing more than Kalashnikovs and home made bombs?

Willpower seems to be beating brawnpower hands down. Any lessons in that?

Things will get considerably worse before they get better, my friends

Nicholas

Taghairm I think the word you are looking for is "exclude" - it works better than "disinclude".

Can you not distinguish between war, even illegal war, the accidents of war and terrorism? Please remind us which global war against Muslim civilians was being fought constantly in the last 50 years that should requires those you defend to murder innocent civilians from all nations across the world. Please also point me to the boasting video showing the barbaric beheading of a Muslim civilian by the armed forces of the West, which had it occurred would have resulted in the hunting down and prosecution of those responsible. Also please cite the specific Western atrocities and acts of terrorism that led to 9/11? Where, in Western culture and religion is the indiscriminate suicide bomb promoted or used? Where are the Christian churches in Saudi Arabia?

Those you defend are evil and barbaric. Don't expect to compare them on equal terms with the West's response to violent Jihad, no matter how ill-advised or poorly executed and find enthusiastic support. Your post demonstrates one of the problems we face in tackling barbaric evil - people like you.

Michael P

I am against profiling on racial or 'religious' grounds (although Lord knows how that is supposed to work) for the simple reason that it would not be as effective. It would merely encourage terrorist organisers to change their profile.

Would a Chechynan or a Bosnian extremist be picked up by this system? No. Would he or she be picked up by a more scattershot approach? Perhaps.

The inconvenience occasioned by Islamist terrorism should be shouldered equally by all innocent people - not just innocent Muslims and Asians.

There are both practical and ethical objections to profiling. To treat it as 'non-PC' panacea is dangerous nonsense.

Dennis Churchill

The next stage in the backlash against politically correct multiculturalism will come as a result of
al-Muhajiroun’s plans to parade through Wootton Bassett, in Wiltshire, in the coming weeks.
It is already causing fury on military Websites.
The BNP must think Christmas has arrived late this year.

Justicia

Profiling has its purposes but due to the brash and, let's face it, racist point of view that most of its public proponents have, it will be going nowhere.

It is not an inditement on Muslims to say that the majority of current terror attacks (let's exclude for the moment the legality of government committed actions as per Tagahairm's comments) are caused by radical extremists who belong to the faith. However this attitude, that there is a genuine us-and-them division between Muslims (or people who 'look' like muslims) and the rest of the world leads to profiling that does itself a disservice.

Absolutely, the security services should keep tabs on people who visit Pakistan's frontier provinces; we know for a fact that *some* Muslims who go there get radicalised and it would be right to do so.

Yes, we should screen those who have a history of 'suspicious' activities. WHere we go too far is when there is no extant conditions other than their religion or skin colour.

It reinforces the idea amongst those who are liable to be radicalised (and none of us should be so foolish as to think that there are pre-determined 'sorts' who will go on to commit atrocities, anyone can be radicalised and our conduct towards them affects that) when we screen them visibly and make a show of it.

We have to keep profiling quiet and as far as possible make it transparent. It is when people of Middle Eastern descent get given the third degree by border control (I once saw a man travelling to the US, with family in tow, get asked a string of questions as to exactly what he was doing in the US; do they think asking a potential extremist if he's planning on doing anything sordid will help?) that we hand Al-Qaeda and the like their strongest promoting tool: A reinforcement that there is some sort of conflict between the 'West' and the Islamic world.

Koakona

Hopefully profiling will force the Muslim community to begin taking a more active interest in rooting out the extremists in their midst. It is almost impossible for anyone to clean it up other than the community spawning these people.

Justicia

@Mitch: Are you suggesting that all Muslims liase with each other and can, perhaps at their next AGM, vote to stop extremism? The loony fringe is at odds with much of the Muslim world, the recent bombing in Pakistan considered, and its wholly and utterly disingenuous of you to suggest that Muslims all live on a sliding scale between being normal and terrorists, and that one group of them can have an impact on groups who are considered pariah and outcast within their communities too.

Simon Stephenson

Taghairm (3.20pm) and Chris (3.39pm)

I think the point to be considered, Chris, is whether or not the Western world is totally non-responsible for the creation of the tensions and ill-feelings that lead to acts of terrorism against it. Is it really the case that the Muslim world, for example, has nothing to complain about with the West's foreign policies? Are the West's policies scrupulously benign towards non-Western peoples?

Or is it more accurate to conclude that Western policy is constructed almost exclusively with Western interests in mind; that in imposing these policies we consider ourselves restricted only by the practical limits of our economic and military power; that we show scant recognition of any need to behave morally or equitably towards people in other parts of the world; and that we purposely misrepresent backlashes to our own arrogance and aggression as being random acts of unprovoked violence perpetrated by madmen?

Edward Palmer

I'd like to put in a plea for a better way to describe the wide mix of potential troublemakers than "Muslim". That'd be like referring, during the Troubles, to Prods & IRA as "Christians". There are many hues and a wide range of opinions amongst Muslims - possibly the most useful distinction initially would be between Shiites & Sunnis. Of course the majority are law-abiding and peaceful, just like everyone else, and are probably offended by the blanket description. If there is to be a grown-up discussion about improving airline security, then the starting point must be a more accurate depiction.

Justicia

@Simon Stephenson

Simon its quite right to say (in my opinion) that antagonism towards the somewhat nebulous entity that is the 'west' is a result of european and american government actions having a crushing impact on other societies.

That said however, it should be kept in mind that it would be wholly unfair to hold the west up to these standards of non-offence when much of the rest of the world regularly commits (think of Egypt's actions towards Palestine et al)

Bygone ought be bygones, and I think that's a view that many people all over the world legitimately accept. The issue is that many (particularly the 'conservative' movement in the US and the more hard-right types over here) are taking this one step further, with the result being that all narratives on terrorism and the middle east are that between the good west and the foreign terror prone islamic world. It is this construct, that Muslims can not fit into our society and that they intrinsically oppose it, that we risk turning into a reality by handing to extremists as a propaganda tool.

Verity

"Can someone tell me if women in burkhas are going to be exempt from entering these body scanners?"

It's already been announced that they will be excused as it would be an affront to islam.

Also, a complaint against the blog management: An early comment sent in by me and not posted has finally been posted, but up near the top in the area that most followers of a thread have already read and won't be revisiting.

I wish that if they misplace a comment and the writer of the comment complains, and they find it, that they post it at the time and date found, rather than burying it up at the top that everyone has already scrolled past.

Why not just post it at the bottom of the thread at the time it was found?

Dennis Churchill

Have any studies been done on safe “Dosages” from the scanners? What with the millions of dead needing to be buried due to Mad Cow Disease—not to mention sun stroke from Global Warming we don’t want to add to the decimation of humanity with a cancer epidemic. Aren’t we advised to stop using Sun Beds...

ROJ

Yes, we need profiling. But perhaps the idiots in charge of airline security could just start with the easy stuff. How many other passengers on that flight to Detroit had paid cash for a one-way ticket, flying with no checked luggage? How hard is it?

Mitch

Why is it OK to invade a sovereign country and kill thousands and thousands of Muslims with tanks,bombs and bullets based on lies and made up "facts" but wrong to frisk them at an airport?

Or am I stupid to ask.

Justicia

@Verity
Has it actually been announced or are you being sarcastic? The scanners seem like a bloody fantastic solution to a lot of our current woes (but for one thing, uptil Christmas most of the scanning software blurs the groin (and face, which isn't a problem) of each individual. I imagine they'll change that now, given the quite obvious security risk.

@Dennis:
There are two types of full body scanner being rolled out to aiports, xray back scatters and another type i'm not familiar with (I think it uses MRI).

The typical dosage from the Xray based one is such that you'd need to fly several times a day every day to get a dosage that even approaches the recommended yearly limit, and is still far below the 'danger' level.

The other type I've only read about, but have been told that you take in more radiation from the actual flight you subsequently go on to than you do from either of these scanners. They seem like an absolutely fantastic innovation provided the sealed room principle is adhered to.

oldtimer

No doubt profiling and body scanners will help - as will other emerging technologies such as the sniffer bees (surely necessary with explosives now concealed in the rectum). But let us all also be in no doubt that effective blocking of would be bombers from boarding aircraft will not make the problem go away. Targets will merely be changed to the accesible airport arrival/departure areas, to sporting events, to shopping malls etc etc where detection and prevention will be even more difficult.

I think we must expect a generation of suicide bombing unless/until the would be bombers become tired of the idea of martyrdom and/or Islam itself matures to the point where it abjures this kind of violence.

john

Shami Chakrabati is a self-important little twerp.
Her biggest fan seemed to be David Davis.
Thank God he's no longer shadow Home Secretary.

Austin Barry

"Can someone tell me if women in burkhas are going to be exempt from entering these body scanners?"

If the answer is indeed 'yes' as Verity indicates, then there is an opportunity for Sid James-types to flog faux-burquas outside airports.

They could be sold as 'Slip-on-Security-Slip-Throughs' with slogans such as 'Avoid the Body Scanners - Don't Let Security Louts laugh at your knockers or knackers!'

ndm

David Blackburn writes:

Profiling is not a human rights issue, being blown-up certainly is.

Mr. Blackburn wins today prize of a yellow star and a free copy of "My Struggle" in the orignal German.

The number of people killed in terrorist attacks on planes remains miniscule in comparison with the numbers killed in "ordinary" murders. The fact is that Mr. Blackburn is far more likely to be killed by an acquantance or a spouse than he is to be killed by a Muslim terrorist. Britian survived decades of the far more deadly consequences of Irish terrorism without abandoning hard-won freedoms. It is tragic to see British morality collapsed so suddenly by its casual acceptance of American cowardice to its shores.

Under President Bush, the West learned to forget the wise words of Franklin Roosevelt that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. And each time we abandon our own freedoms we succumb to fear and so give victory to those who seek to terrorize us. In promoting the racism that is racial profiling Mr. Blackburn succumbs to that fear and gives the terrorists all the victory they need.

Last year one Muslim out of one billion tried and failed to set a plane on fire. Profiling holds all Muslims responsible for the actions of some. It is collective punishment. And it is racist.

denis cooper

Verity, your reply @ 5:32 -

" "Can someone tell me if women in burkhas are going to be exempt from entering these body scanners?"

It's already been announced that they will be excused as it would be an affront to islam."

Are you sure of that?

If it's true, it's totally insane.

Dennis Churchill

ROJ
Profiling of baggage handling staff may be more useful. If things can go missing from luggage they can be added. The added advantage for the bomber being they don’t have to go immediately to paradise or risk bits and pieces that you might find handy having-what with the 72 virgins and all—being burnt off.
A government consisting of former Student Activists, who have never held senior jobs outside politics, may find some obvious necessary actions difficult to understand, but should try unless they want to be forced to find real jobs suitable for their abilities.

In2minds

This is a really big subject and it's bigger than Saint Chakrabati. I don't want Nulabour reducing my civil liberties still further to fight a 'war on terror'. And I don't want St Chak running the organisation that is supposed to stop the government doing just that, it's too important and apart from being good on TV I doubt her abilities.

St Chak says “Any response to terrorism has to be proportionate." Indeed, but then proportionate is the weasel word here. Liberty, the organisation St Chak runs has around 8000 members, the Vintage Motorcycle Club of the UK has 16000. So why is the woman on TV so often, is there no other person who cares about this? Mind you, her sister works for the BBC!

Noa Zrk

The only proportionate response to terrorism is to oppose it; implacably and with every means at our disposal.
Rigorous profiling, body searching of muslims and the introduction of armed marshals on aircraft should be instituted forthwith. Now that would "...indeed be a proportionate and respectful response of the human rights values of dignity, privacy and liberty that governments on both sides of the Atlantic have been all too easily tempted to ignore.”

Snowman

Justicia @ 5.04:

Have you (and Tagahairms) gone completely bonkers comparing the bombing by the allied forces or NATO with terrorist bomb attacks? The former may not be to your or his liking, but it’s morally justified and legally kosher - it got sanctioned by the democratic representatives elected by the people casting their votes freely. However distasteful and abhorrent it may sound, democracies get their hands bloody, too.

The bombing’s done on our behalf, we elected the people who, in their judgement, decided that it takes place. If enough of us disagree, we won’t vote for those who ordered the bombings. Moreover, if events prove that the bombings were ordered on false pretences than those responsible can face the full weight of the law. It may take time, but there’s enough checks and balances in our society left to ensure that eventually it happens.

Who gave the terrorists the legal right to kill us? What moral justification do they have except for the some stale tenets recorded some 1400 years ago in a book that most of those who recite it don’t even speak the language it’s written in. Whom do they represent? Have citizens of any nation given in free elections the deluded maniacs the mandate to bomb us? Is there a mechanism, the equivalent of ours, however imperfect it may be, that can dislodge these men short of killing them?

Jesus Christ, we are truly finished, kaput, dead as parrots if we accept the deadly fallacy of moral equivalence so casually.

Sacre Bleu

The Schengen Agreement allows pretty well unrestructed movement within the EU countries which means open borders. Once those people with intent cross into EU it is almost impossible to keep track. Passport control should be reintroduced - no passport no travel. Bring back visa stamps to track all cross border movements and consider block restrictions. No Somalis for example, their own country is hardly an example of 'democracy, their piracy is treated with unbelievable tolerance. SatNav should know where the pirates are and anyone within say 1000m should be identified as a non pirate or sunk. They won't do it again. A guy with an axe and a knife in Denmark? why not shoot to kill. The location and intent was pretty clear. We are always far to ready to appease and roll over so someone somewhere start taking a hardline. A pilot can refuse a passenger as I understand it so if burkas, or anyone else for that matter, go unscanned, don't accept them as passengers. I am not hard line in my way of life but sometimes it is necessary to break a vicious circle and I feel we are in a vicious circle at present and it is not exclusively muslim.

Publius

Profiling, and these god-awful scanners, would be a disaster. Enough has been said about the scanners. As for profiling, it will be applied by idiot bureaucrats, it will rely on absurd technology and equally absurd psychology, and it will merely provide yet another excuse for the state to boss and bully.

Publius

Also, bear in mind that in this most recent incident the *existing* bureaucratic systems failed. Why would an extra layer succeed when what we already have can't be applied properly.

(And, as usual with so much nonsensical modernity, the dopey herd think that technology will provide the answer)

Justicia

@Snowman: Please don't straw man me, re-read my post and think about what I wrote.

Tagahairms certainly seemed to be bringing that up, and its his point of view, for what its worth. I don't agree with it, and talking about that would have made the more accesible issue of profiling irrelevant, which is why I left it out.

If it would have been more to your liking if I had made a strong condemnation of him and given a quick summary on democratic bombing I apologize. I just thought it'd be better to talk about an issue with merit rather than wade into the ridiculous fallacy of comparing government actions and terrorism.

P.s: Again I am not comparing terrorism to NATO bombing, but I should point out

1; whether its morally justified is, as always, a point of debate
2; it was certainly not legal under international law, irrespective of whether that's fair or not.

David Ossitt

“It is a truth, yet to be universally acknowledged, that the overwhelming majority of global terrorism is committed by radical Muslims”

The world is going to hell fast; in a politically correct handcart.

Someone; on one of the posts, (sorry I can’t remember who) posed a valid question.

I will paraphrase it; if it is all right and proper to bomb and kill Muslims in a number of illegal or badly conceived wars, why must we treat them with kid-gloves at home?

wrinkled weasel

Correct me if I am wrong here, but since 9/11, all terrorists in the UK and America have been male, Muslim, bearded and under 30. (Perhaps that needs a bit of tweaking, but on the whole, it fits.)

So why do the police routinely, and I mean routinely, stop people under the terrorism legislation who clearly do not fit this profile?

Goron Brown said this on the official Number Ten website:

"The Detroit plot thankfully failed. But it has been another wake-up call for the ongoing battles we must wage not just for security against terror but for the hearts and minds of a generation."

Wake up call? Wake up call? If the Prime Minister interprets the Detroit attempt as a "wake up call", he has been pressing the snooze button for eight and a half years.

Peter From Maidstone

Justicia, it has been shown that 160,000 Muslims in the UK believe that suicide bombing is acceptable. I think that this sort of a statistics justifies society considering all Muslims as a threat.

Certainly there has not been unequivocal condemnation of all suicide bombing by any Muslim groups, and they always use weasel words such as 'not against the innocent'. I am sure that I am not one of the innocent and therefore am justified as a target.

I know of no Christians among any of those I am in touch with around the world from a variety of traditions who support any sort of terrorism. Yet it seems to be the case that a very significant proportion of Muslims living in the UK do support terrorism, and the vast majority of Muslim majority states practice it as a matter of course against Christians and other minorities in their midst.

It seems to me entirely reasonable to profile all Muslims negatively in the UK until Muslims in the UK stand up honestly and vocally against all terrorism.

It would be interesting to see what percentage of Muslims in the UK support a Muslim protest march in Wootton Bassett.

Peter From Maidstone

David Ossitt @ 7:44pm. A good question. And the answer of course is that here in the UK Muslims make up a substantial proportion of the Labour vote.

This is why Christians can be offended and discriminated against at will by the state.

Verity

Simon Stephenson, I don’t think you’ve quite got a grasp on the nature of jihad. It is nothing to do with tit for tat. It has to do with fury that we don’t pay a blind bit of attention to what their desert diety wants. Don’t we understand? He is the boss of everyone! Islam is about conversion by the sword, or, nowadays, bumbomb.

Justica – You are talking lefty, malinformed rubbish. Yes, I saw it announced but didn’t make note of it because it had an air of inevitability about it. I now see that others have also asked and I’m now sorry I didn’t make a note of it. But, as I say, obviously Muslims who don’t want their wives and daughters to show their faces in public (for which, in most cases, much thanks) were going to immediately start up a little side jihad when full body xrays were announced. There was an air of drab inevitability about it.

Dennis Churchill, well, there’s a thought indeed. They haven’t informed us how many hundreds of thousands of people will die from airport full body scanners. Odd, that, given that they have exact figures they have for deaths from global warming, and were quite specific about mad cow disease, ebola, Asian flu, blah-de-blah-blah. However, you apparently haven’t read much about Islam if you don’t know that jihadis who die a suicidal death in the service of allah get miraculously made whole again. So those recycled virgins are kept on the hop. And the jihadis, who were enjoined from drinking alcohol while they were alive, are treated to "rivers of wine".

I’m in accord with Publius. Enough, already! Let us just say that Muslims cannot embark on a plane in a Western country. Story, end of. They brought it on themselves and the West has been insanely, suicidally tolerant. Indeed, one might even suspect that the Muslims had succeeded in bullying us in our own countries.

Justicia

The sheer drivel that gets posted on here sometimes is overwhelming.

@Peter: 166,000 (which is the upper end of the estimate, based on a question of whether suicide bombings (in palestine as well as elsewhere) were acceptable. Its a worrying number, but its 1 in 11 of the British Muslim population. To put that in context a poll for Fox in the US had over 1 in 8 thinking that bombing mecca would be a reasonable way of waging the war on terror.

To the suggestion that Labour are being laissez faire on the issue because the Muslim vote is propping them up; leaving aside the vulgarity of suggesting that the current government, for all its incompetence, is willfully turning a blind eye to terror for electoral gain; have some of the commentators considered why the Tories aren't also proposing to force Muslims to wash their hands of people who they aren't even associated with?

It might be because Cameron and his aides have been caught up in all the bemoaned PC hogwash, or it might be, as quite a few of the writers for the spectator have noted, that everytime Islam is raised on this website, logic reason and the notion of liberty gets thrown straight out of the windows for racism, stereotyping and alarmism.

Snowman

Justicia: Apologies, and I mean it: I should have read the whole piece before exploding. Nature made me an awkward bastard, you know. Peace?

On your morality point just this. If the motive, even if it engenders pain, could be proven to be, on balance, selfless, it’s moral, in my slim book.

Given my rather simplistic definition of morality, the Iraq was ranks amongst internationally illegal, but moral causes. (And please don’t anyone jump on me that it was oil we were fighting for. If this were the case, Bush could have kissed Saddam, and taking the stuff for next to nothing).

Snowman

and another thing:

What makes you all think that if profiling were brought in it would be only Muslims who will get touched. My observations, when travelling, would suggest about a fifth of the crowd, and by any means, not all Muslims.

Minnie Ovens

Ms Chakrabati is remarkably prescient in setting up her Box in a Christian democracy.
One wonders why she did not choose to use her undoubted talents in countries with major human rights issues such as China, India, Pakistan, and the Arab world where she might not be prosetilyzing to the converted.
All the most self serving left wing liberals are armchair liberals.
You know it makes sense.

AndyinBrum

Excuse me, how do you prove someone's a muslim?

You cant, so any one swarthy looking, black, big nosed and with a beard, are now banned from flying? Oh and while we're at it,that just means they'll alter the bombers and start using ones who dont match the above profiles.

Like Richard Reed.

Shall we be over reacting hysterical drama queens? Or shall we stop and actually think about the fact that Al Queda appear to be only employing retarded moronic fuckwits to carry out their evil plans, and we overreact accordingly.

Just a thought before you all head for the hills and start lynching anyone with a suntan

Derek

I was pleased to see that In2minds and Noa Zrk had noted the cant use of "proportionate" by Shami Chakrabati. It is of course only a short step from using the term to attempt to deligitimize Israel's use of force in its self-defence to providing an argument against measures intended to protect us from muslim terrorists at home. The canting though reminds us that Israel's battle and our own are fought in the same war.

I agree with Publius' concern that profiling will provide an excuse to idiot bureaucrats to boss and bully; but my understanding of the intent of profiling is that its aim would actually be to reduce the amount of bossing and bullying to which all travelers are presently subject by largely restricting it to the group from which the muslim terrorists were most likely to be drawn. This, in theory, would avoid the strip search for the 85 year old mothers-in-law wearing back braces and give the idiot bureaucrats more time to focus their intelligence on ensuring that rich Saudi kids were given a proper once-over. I tend to agree with Verity however that a more robust approach to the problem, and not only in our airports, should be adopted. In the future, that will probably be forced on our wretched government by another "wake-up call".

Adam C. Sieracki

"Would a Chechynan or a Bosnian extremist be picked up by this system?"

Yes--they have MUSLIM NAMES. Aside from Richard Reid, they all did. And misogynistic al Qaeda doesn't use female bombers, like the LTTE does. There is no way around this--'racial' (really, ethno-religious) profiling works, however distasteful the truth may be. The authorities also have to entertain the queasy thought that sympathetic security personnel wave people like Undie-bomber Umar through. Perhaps, less PC hiring policies should be put in place.

As people have said here, the 'human right' to not prematurely die takes precidence over concerns of ethno-religious profiling. Given that security resources are limited, it's silly to broadly screen people--elderly women, children with Christian names--when ALL Islamic airline terrorists have been young Muslim men. Political correctness takes on silly forms, like here in Canada: Muslims have protested bomb-sniffing dogs on Vancouver's Sky Train system.

Kennybhoy

Basic civil liberty in this land, and indeed throughout the western world, was struck down not recently by some vast wingnut conspiracy with an anti-terror agenda, but a generation past by the likes of Chakrabarti and her ilk in the name of what in the USA is termed "Special Victim" ideaology. She is quite possibly the single foulest hypocrite in British public life today.

Verity

Kenny Boy - "She is possibly the foulest hypocrite in England today." High praise indeed! Especially in a country that includes Cherie Blair in it, and Jacqui Smith, Harriet Harmon, Jack Straw, Gordon Brown, the BBC, etc.
I've mentioned this before, but no one responded: Has anyone other than me ever noted how bloody awful looking socialists are? You can see that they had a grudge against the world from adolescence due to ugliness.

Peter Crawford

AndyinBrum

But Richard Reid WAS swarthy, big-nosed and bearded. So profiling would definitely have worked and it seems odd that you should single him out as one who would have somehow slipped the net.

I am also puzzled by your remark that "They" will "alter the bombers". How exactly ? Start a recruitment drive for little old ladies in Tunbridge Wells ? Come off it, man.

Peter

My obviously pregnant wife's underwired bra resulted in a thorough strip-search at Heathrow. Someone less like an Islamist terrorist you could not imagine. I now want to thrash to the point of coma the people who did that, the people who ordered it and the politicians who blithely allow such things.

Justicia

@AndyinBrum: You make a fantastic point, though of course it is irrelevant here as this debate has degenerated into a showcase of racism, irrationality and islamophobia in its textbook definition

@Ada, C Sieracki: Let's leave aside the fact that you've just admitted that one of the most dangerous recent cases is an exception to your rule. That aside, the triviality of changing one's name, linked with the fact that the vast majority of countries (including this one) do not coordinate passport control and name change data means that it would be unbelievably easy to for a would-be terrorist to legitimately obtain non-profiled credentials. Unless we start profiling all brown/black/bearded individuals, in which case the international airline industry will have to deal with a good quarter of its pilots not going anywhere anytime soon.

We could talk about the stupidity of profiling people based on skin colour or religion, either of which would ground a sixth of the world's population. Ultimately we have to recognize that this is completely unrealistic, and the fact that the debate on this thread has gotten there is a result of the ignorant race-baiting that Verity and others are engaging in.

The best avenue to proceed down as I've said and feel, is to increase profiling by the security services for high risk targets, and to rollout more airport security. Despite what people fear, we have sufficient technology to screen all people going through airport terminals for security risks on their person. It will be expensive, but it will work.

Fergus Pickering

Chakrabati the single foulest hypocrite? While the present government rules? Come now sir? Re profiling - I don't see why I should be body searched. People who look like me don't seem to be the ones carrying bombs. They are all black or brown. And body searching hardly equates to lynching, now does it? What on earth is wrong with stereotyping in this srt of context? A good short cut, I would have thought. In the days when Irishmen were trying to kill us then keeping an eye on men with Irish accents seemed a sensible thing to do, wouldn't you say?

Verity

Kennybhoy re the ghoulish Shami Boom-Boom - "She is quite possibly the single foulest hypocrite in British public life today."

I'd drink to that, except, not while David Cameron is in public life.

The Masked Marvel

AndyinBrum and all other Hand-Wringers,

It's perfectly simple: anyone with a passport from an Islamic country should be heavily profiled.

What's that you say? What about all the home-grown terrorists with British passports? Simple: Any member of a UK mosque or Islamic society in Britain should have their passport marked and fingerprint or DNA collected, which should be scanned and available every time they try to get on a plane.

Awww, what's that you say now? Mohammedans will feel unfairly persecuted? Then tell them to clean house. The current government and PC-fascist media will not permit this, but then you are condemning innocents to suffer for a hypothetical temporary inconveniencing of a minority.

If British Muslim citizens object, they should make sure there aren't any radicals or - more importantly - radicalizing imams or other so-called spiritual advisers in their midst. It's already a fact that those are the dangerous ones, so if Muslims want to be part of British society, they should clean their own houses. Honestly encourage this - although I'm sure you are intellectually incapable of it - and the 7/7 bombers, the "students" arrested in Birmingham several months ago, and the Undie-Bomber simply won't be a problem any more.

If Baroness Warsi, Keith Vaz, and the top Imams of Luton and Birmingham are inconvenienced with no legal bullying recourse, they just might sort it out for you.

Peter From Maidstone

Justicia, your comparision of a poll to support bombing of Mecca in the US, and a poll which shows support for suicide bombing by UK Muslims is bogus.

The ordinary US citizen is NOT in a position to bomb Mecca, even if he wished to. But quite clearly the ordinary Muslim in the UK IS able to become a suicide bomber - and since all of the recent terrorist plots in the UK have been attempted by British based Muslims it seems that they are more than willing to do so.

Derek

Would I be right in guessing from her prose style that Justicia is an escaped intern from the Guardian? I guess (and "feel") it might be so.

Peter From Maidstone

Justicia, I also note from the Sunday Times that it is thought that up to a dozen British Muslims are in Yemen at the moment being trained in terrorism.

How many members of other ethnic and religious groups in the UK are presently being trained for terrorism? Are there British Methodists in training camps on the Pakistani border? Is the British Sikh community being radicalised? Are there weapons being stored in Quaker meeting houses? Is the Finnish community in London planning an assault on No 10?

It seems to me that the present danger comes to us from one quarter only, and therefore it is that quarter which must receive the majority of the resources spent on supervision and detection.

When the members of my own Church become a national threat I would expect them to be subject to increased attention. But until that is the case I would expect that the community which poses the greatest threat is subject to the greatest control.

Geoff Miller

Not so very long ago at Stansted Airport I, a business suited, auburn, green eyed Englishman was told to removed my jacket, belt, shoes.

My briefcase was emptied and the contents closely scrutinised.

meanwhile, immediately ahead of me were two mulsim women in full burqua's.

They were politely waved through.

The world has gone MAD!!!!!!!

Rhoda Klapp

When you fly, you are buying a ticket from a commercial enterprise. You do not have a right to fly. You are not dealing (usually) with a national government. Put the onus onto the airline to check its passengers for threat. Let the airline decide whether to profile or not, under pain of taking responsibility for any laxity. It is incumbent on the passenger to accept the degree of search and incinvenience for the permission to get on the plane. If they balk, return their money and refuse them the flight. This is like having your bag searched on entering a shop, which happened to many of us in the various bomb campaigns of the IRA.

An airline with a reputation for laxity would lose custom (or gain it). An airline with a reputation for security vice versa. People who did not want to be searched could pick a lax airline, or not fly. It is only when security is provided by the state that human rights come in, otherwise it is a simple contractual condition which one could refuse or accept.

Ken

What a fuss!
El Al has thwarted the evil and barbaric ones for decades. Just follow suit (and follow the money if you want to know why mass, cancer-inducing,intrusive x-ray screening is now flavour-of-the-day.)

"El Al employs stringent security procedures, both on the ground and on board its aircraft. In 2008, the airline was named by Global Traveler magazine as the world's most secure airline. Passengers are asked to report three hours before departure. All El Al terminals around the world are closely monitored for security... El Al security procedures require that all passengers be interviewed individually prior to boarding, allowing El Al staff to identify possible security threats... bags are put through a decompression chamber simulating pressures during flight that could trigger explosives...Even at overseas airports, El Al security agents conduct all luggage searches personally, even if they are supervised by government or private security firms. Undercover agents carrying concealed firearms sit among the passengers on every international El Al flight...The cockpits in all El Al aircraft have double doors to prevent entry by unauthorised persons...Furthermore, there are reinforced steel floors separating the passenger cabin from the baggage hold...." (Wikipedia - for what its worth)

Peter From Maidstone

Rhoda, unfortunately commercial enterprises are not allowed to infringe anyone's supposed 'human rights'. Thus a Christian hotel must accomodate a homosexual couple, and a Christian adoption agency must place vulnerable children with homosexuals.

Likewise a commercial airline would run up against all manner of 'human rights' if it tried to act as you describe. This is not reasonable nor acceptable, but it is the way it is.

If you are drunk you can be refused permission to fly, if you are completely covered in a burqa then the airline would be sued, probably by Cherie Blair.

THX1138

I'm "profiling" out of visiting USA until they come to their collective senses. Immigration was an even bigger nightmare in the summer than usual. Over zealous security is going to hurt the US economy and not going to make a blind bit of difference to their security.

One terrorist incident per 27,221,877 hours airborne and they close the country down Pathetic!!

We just booked to go to Pacific coast of Mexico instead of my beloved LA this Easter- so there's some money they lost already -Flying into Mexico City, they are really welcoming unlike the US and the people apart from a few expats are lovely.

THX1138

Oh and I agree with Rhoda Klapp lets have a free market solution.

John Richardson

Verity.

You seem to respond to any query or disagreement with personal insults.

This is a question of breeding Verity.

Verity

The Masked Marvel. Excellent sense!

Justicia - Here is something very simple that you absolutely must understand yet you cannot seem to learn it. I have pointed this out before to you: Islam is not a race. This is five words you should reread. It is a belief system. No one judges black Christians as being any different from white Christians. No one here is anti-black. People get born into a race. They don’t have a choice.

However, and this is where you should take your index finger and follow the text on the screen: Islam is a belief system. As is Christianity. As is Hinduism. As is Buddhism. A belief system is freely adhered to. If one doesn’t agree with the tenets of a belief system, one jettisons it. Every muslim on planet earth is in the muslim fold because they have chosen to remain in it. They believe that the world has to be conquered for allah. (They never explain why allah’s so greedy, by the way.)

I realize this removes your key point – that anyone who finds islam loathsome is a racist, unlike wonderful you. There are white muslims in Albania. Black muslims in Africa. There are Mongol muslims in China. There are Aryan muslims in Iran. These are all different races.

Your petty, diminishing the grotesque problem of islam to an issue of "race" is, in the parlance of your kind, "not helpful".

Re profiling, I wrote on another thread that if white, blue-eyed blond people were identified as the group that tries to crash transAtlantic airliners over big American cities, no white, blue-eyed person would ever be allowed near a plane. What is the agenda behind allowing the group that is responsible for 100% of terrorist incidents in the air to get anywhere near an airline? (By which I include the thousands who are working airside.)

And no, we should not waste billions "rolling out more security". We should do the level-headed thing and profile.

THX1138

Surprise, surprise airport scanners wouldn't have picked up the "underpants bomber"

http://bit.ly/8FM8iJ

We're all going to spend are lives in airport security queues and it ain't gonna make a blind bit of difference. And anybody things that profiling is going to work is totally deluded

London Calling

Why Intelligence sharing is essential?

Information that may have deterred Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from a terrorsit act was handed on a plate by his own father. The failure therefore is evident. No amount of scanners would have prevented Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding a plane other than the Intelligence to act on information available. The diversion of blame has at least prompted future Intelligence sharing. Profiling has its advantages and is better than no profiling, however let us not forget that the 7/7 bombers were able to deceive the closest members of their family and therefore a code of silence is evident amongst the perpetrators.

The tighter security becomes, the more ideas are born to counteract, therefore profiling is only one link in the chain. The 9/11 bombers were calm, cold and calculating, we must never underestimate the mind of murderers.

The wake up call was already woken, the intelligence service slept at the helm simply by not coordinating better communication between themselves and others.

What us essential, is to stay awake…

Simon Stephenson

Verity 3.11pm

"Every muslim on planet earth is in the muslim fold because they have chosen to remain in it. They believe that the world has to be conquered for allah."

Are you sure this is right, Verity? Could it not be the case that there are some muslims whose apparent allegiance to their faith is no more than luke-warm, and held only for reasons of social pressure? Just as there are, for example, Roman Catholics, Methodists or Buddhists who carry the flag more to keep up appearances than through any hard ideological commitment to the faith.

I only ask because assuming that 100% of adherents to a faith are homicidal maniacs is, surely, unlikely to bring about entirely appropriate policy, if the reality is that the vast majority of those adherents are neither homicidal, nor maniacal.

Austin Barry

Perhaps Ryanair's CEO, the innovative Michael O'Leary, could institute premium priced non-Muslim flights. I'm not quite sure how, apart from the obvious indicators, eligibility would be further established, perhaps a body scan to determine the circumcised or genitally-mutilated, in addition to passengers producing additional documentary evidence (a baptismal certificate say, or copy of a police complaint laid against a priest from when you were an altar boy). A modest proposal.

Verity

I don't think the leaders in Britain, the US and Canada, the three countries who are the most lenient and "understanding" of jihadi mass murderers, are behaving as they do by mistake.

Destabilising the normal population by refusing to find jihad and various moslem habits primitive and repulsive is not done in error. Islam has become a dandy weapon of control for the Marxists.

John Richardson

S. Stephenson.

Further to your point; it is often pointed out that the Koran commands the murder of apostates.
Thus making it especially difficult to guess how many people in 'Moslem' countries actually belive 'body and soul' in Islam (a cult anyway, before it is a faith or belife system).

YA

Verity please please don't argue with jihadi clowns.

They will repeat ad nauseum a viewpoint they choose as suitable for future dhimmis - that "profiling" is unlawful and/or immoral and/or racist and/or ineffective, and/or impractical.

Their goal is to keep ways open for mass murderers, and then blame Western imperialism. They were taught from childhood that kuffar have no right of self-defence, so obstacles like "profiling" puzzle and irritate them.

In our normal cognitive space, everyone who have at least a couple of connected neurons in brain understands that "profiling" is just a sort of intelligence, and abandoning it for whatever reason would de-facto mean complicit to murder of non-Muslims. There is nothing to discuss and prove here (and to whom prove, jeez.. be realistic).

JohnBUK

Simon Stephenson - I dare say you are right, it is highly unlikely that 100% of Muslims really do want to take over the world as it were. But nevertheless they apparently willingly remain in a "club" that has quite abhorrent aims. We have a party in Britain, BNP, which, up until recently, refused membership to any non-white persons, argued for repatriation of similar and for that have been vilified by the media and other parties. They have also been threatened in law for their "beliefs". I don't think they actually state that all non-whites should be killed and their members, I'm sure, put their allegiance to Britain above anything else. That doesn't mean I agree with them but nevertheless it's strange that another group of individuals with similar views (apart from killing non-believers instead of repatriation) and who would seem to place allegiance to their "club" above that of their country, remain fairly untouched by the same bodies? We and that "club" really do need to question their allegiance and beliefs and decide what they stand for. They are a significant minority (at present) and it's time they accepted our, and their, country's culture and demand the fundamentalists amongst them change their ways or hand them over to the authorities. The current strategy of pandering to their "Seniors" by the establishment will not motivate this.

biggestaspidistra

When I passed through St Pancras International a couple of days ago the young lady monitoring the luggage x-ray screen was asleep, with her eyes closed. She slept through the luggage of the three passengers in front of me and through my luggage. When I pointed this out to the baggage handlers at the beginning and the end of the conveyer belt they appeared not to understand English. Might there be a step to consider before profiling and full body scans - namely paying attention.

John Richardson

Verity; "Islam...[is a]...weapon of control for the Marxists."

Yes.
I agree absolutely.
Two quibbles.
Marxist/Globalist interchangeable ?
Secondly, (please don't take offence) I am now confused about the naked hatred you sometimes seem to express towards 'dem Muslims'.
Perhaps it's the medium & your subtle inferences or humour are lost ?
Yes, they are backward & violent often.So what ? They always were.
Yes, they hate their superiors. So do all undeveloped people and cultures I have ever encountered.
But a threat to the West?
Ridiculous.
The threat is internal and 'dem Muslims' are being used, as you suggest, to alter society.
Are we not, "Destabilizing the normal population.....", when we succumb to this agenda accepting at face value information from a MSM we normally despise and distrust ?
Regards.

phil

Taghairm I would like to tell you if I am allowed , that if you wish to live in the part of the world that we do ,with all the benefits that accrue to you then please conform to our way of life or go to another part where you will find it more acceptable -we wish to live in peace with one another ,not blow one another up .We have no wish for war ,our various religions teach us peace and respect for one another ,something we do not seem to receive from those with minds like yours .
-------------------
Our nation has accepted many different ethnic groups happily and they have integrated with us and given much to our ways ,Chinese ,African ,Indian ,West Indian and many more ,different religions and persuasions and yet you have the gall to criticise us ,therein lies the problem -you wish to impose your unpleasant ways upon us and sadly with the help of the ridiculous minds like that of of the ubiquitous Shami C you are afforded protection from most of our criticism .
---------------
Messages like yours do great harm to the Muslim people who wish to live in peace and harmony with us ,Those like Shami C should also reflect on her words before patronising us with her nonsense from a very well paid position supported by charitable people who wish to live in peace and security ,a state that her words harm rather than help .

Noa "Handsome" Zrk

Verity @January 3rd, 2010 12:06am

"...Has anyone other than me ever noted how bloody awful looking socialists are? You can see that they had a grudge against the world from adolescence due to ugliness...".
Yep, they tend to be mean-spirited buggers too, the lot of 'em. But then you have to be hard faced when, atypically, you charge the taxpayer £20k+ per annum for the priviledge of living in your sisters back room.
Blairs Poo-faced Babes and Boobies would do us a real favour if they donned the burqua, and a potential side benefit of full body scanners is that they wouldn't need to take them off in public places.