"Brilliant police work" thwarts terror plot

"Al Qaeda terrorists planned to use "dirty bombs" to blow up the Heathrow Express or a Tube train passing under the Thames, a court heard today. " Read the whole thing.

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Counter-arguments for Profiling

I've heard three main arguments against profiling:

1. It is un-American and a violation of civil rights.
2. It will piss off the Arabs and turn them into terrorists
3. The terrorists will simply recruit anti-American anglos

Number 1 I'll leave to the lawyers and judges. But number 2, heard most often from Bob Wright, is readily assailable.

Every instance of passenger-initiated 'profiling' that has resulting in delays and even removal of scary looking passengers is an example of why the authorities should be doing this as professionals. Passengers are reacting this way precisely because they understand that political correctness is putting them in danger. Let the screeners use common sense profiling and those Arabs/Muslims who are sitting next to you on a plane will have a stamp of approval, no need to take matters into your own hands.

I won't even go into the insulting nature of his premise on the "Arabs are prone..." level. Bob is unabashed in his soft liberal racism.

Number three is actually a huge benefit in the war on terror. What would we like better than to force alQ, etc into recruiting anglos? Finally, our chance to infiltrate!

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Hitchens on Bali

Christopher Hitchens on the Bali bombings: (read the whole thing)

Never make the mistake of asking for rationality here. And never underestimate the power of theocratic propaganda. The fanatics look at the population of Bali and its foreign visitors and they see a load of Hindus selling drinks—often involving the presence of unchaperoned girls—to a load of Christians. That in itself is excuse enough for mayhem. They also see local Muslims following syncretic and tolerant forms of Islam, and they yearn to redeem them from this heresy and persuade them of the pure, desert-based truths of Salafism and Wahhabism. (One of the men on trial in Bali had been in trouble before, in his home village, for desecrating local Muslim shrines that he regarded as idolatrous.) And then, of course, Australians must die. Why would that be? Well, is it not the case that Australia sent troops to help safeguard the independence of East Timor and the elections that followed it? A neighboring country that assists the self-determination of an Indonesian Christian minority must expect to have the lives of its holidaymakers taken.

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