We haven’t discussed this at all yet, so what do we think?
A lot of commentary is focussing on the way that the UK found these plotters using traditional policing methods without having to resort to liberty-infringing measures such as those favoured by the Bush administration with their warrantless surveillance provisions etc. Yet of course the Bush administration is taking credit for being Tough on Terror at an ocean’s remove.
It’s also worth noting that this incident has taken the hottest eyes of the international media away from Lebanon/Israel for the time being.
Mildly NSFW image over the fold (profanity/obscenity)
Image from here.
I’d be interested to hear what people think about proposals such as this one, by Peter Faris in yesterday’s Crikey. I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this suggestion.
I think it’s rubbish.
While this profiling will concentrate hard on Middle Eastern Muslims, how difficult will it be for Al Qaeda to recruit Muslims from outside the Middle East ancestry group if they want to do it badly enough?
How difficult is it to organise false IDs? What if a Middle Eastern Muslim pretends to be a Jew in order to get a bomb past security? Or an African Muslim pretends to be Christian? Or a SE Asian Muslim pretends to be Buddhist?
Profiling as he suggests is a “solution” that solves nothing.
It’s a dumb idea on several levels, and probably unconstitutional into the bargain. See s.116 of the Constitution:
“The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.”
Yes, I agree it is a totally dumb idea from the practical and constitutional senses. And also a repulsive idea. What interests me is the mentality that produces these knee jerk reactions – almost as if they have them on the shelf waiting to be taken down whenever a pretext presents itself.
This is a joke right?
[Greeted with grim silence.]
It’s not a joke???
OK. [Edges cautiously toward nearest exit]. What about the Muslim who apostacises from Islam? Does he get a “Former Muslim” ID card?
Cast your mind back to the Madrid bombings. All of the leading perpetrators were leading thoroughly secular lives.
Terrorists aren’t stupid. How easy is it for them to pass as anything but Muslim?
Meantime two-class IDs provoke the kind of discrimination and sense of alienation that helps to inspire fanaticism.
Peter Faris, the proposer of this nonsense, deserves a good slapping.
[Braces self for the outburst from the usual rollcall of bunker-hunkered chicken-hawks, Islamophobes, control freaks and dog-whistle racists. (No I'm not accusing any one of you of being all of these things. Just stupid in baroque profusion.)]
Ok. How about bigot?
Note that one of the alleged bombers was a British convert.
It’s about the religion Shaun, not the race. Surprising that you’d embrace racism for such an expedient purpose.
…using traditional policing methods without having to resort to liberty-infringing measures such as those favoured by the Bush administration with their warrantless surveillance provisions etc.
What an extraordinarily dishonest statement. In fact authorities have been tracking the suspects’ spending, travel and communications, all measures that liberals have opposed – from the New York Times to the ACLU, from the Nutroots Kos Kidz to the weirdo Bob Brown Australian left. The monitoring of suspects’ outgoing international communications recently had American chickenhawk liberals suggesting George Bush should be impeached.
Recently this site published war-porn pictures of dead people to emphasise the gravity of war. Now it publishes a photo-gag to make light of a plan to slaughter thousands of people. The left really is morally ill.
Tigtog and Mark:
Thanks for putting up this topic: at least we might get a sensible discussion of it on Lavatus Prodeo in contrast to a lot of the piffle and the dangerous musunderstandings that are being flung at the public.
Like it or not, unofficial informal profiling has been going on for years (I’m a member of group that has probably been profiled for ages and if so, local staff would be relieved to find that I am not a risk at all to life-and-limb nor to peace-and-good-order).
There is nothing wrong with officially-conducted profiling provided it is done in an ethical, impartial and professional manner. What really frightened me though (and probably alarmed law-abiding Moslems here) was the underlying assumption in the quote above of Barrister Peter Faris QC that Moslems are terrorists. Whoa!!!
Patient, careful collection, collation and analysis of real-world evidence by tenacious, observant and lateral-thinking staff (for which the British have been long renowned) will ALWAYS beat c*ck-and-bull reports based on wild guesswork, inadequate observations and faulty perceptions.
And will Sir be flying Muslim or non-Muslim?
Profiling is just playing the odds, and I would bet my leftie that this guy’s call to “think seriously about Islamic profiling” is obsolete — it’s being done already.
Well I for one am glad that the authorities tracked their communications and bank accounts.
But, tell us C.L., do you support the Farris proposals?
If it’s about religion, presumably it includes Albanian Muslims, who haven’t done anything to anybody, but they are Muslims and therfore suspect. Bad lack for the star AFL player Adem Yze of the Melbourne football club. When his team gets on a plane to play an interstate
game, he’d have to stay behind.
The guff about “traditional policing methods” is indeed dishonest. If you wish to argue that a greater risk of terrorist attacks is a price worth paying for civil liberties, go to it. It is an entirely defensible position. But arguing that there are no trade-offs involved is a clear signal that you are not to be taken seriously on this subject.
I don’t see how I am embracing the racism. Please withdraw the accusation as I find your insinuation offensive and uncalled for.
Maybe I’m dense, but I’m still astounded by the “logic” of how folks like C.L. can accuse those who don’t want people treated differentially for no urgent reason of being bigoted or racist… ???
Mark
It is, as P.W. Herman would devastatingly ask his accusers :
“I know you are, but what am I?”
To save all you lefties reading this comment, I plead guilty to charges of bigotry, racism, RWDBism, Zionism et al. These epithets have become a badge of honour, mainly because the left has made them meaningless.
I’m 100% with Faris on this. It’s so politically correct to say all terrorists aren’t Moslems. I agree. Only about 99% of terrorists are Moslem these days, especially since the IRA put away their bombs.
It’s also not entirely correct to say our enemy is Islamofascists. Moslems everywhere are our enemy. Yes even the so-called peaceful Moslems in Lakemba and thereabouts. If you doubt this and if you’re game enough take a train ride down to Lakemba and ask a dozen men of “middle east appearance” where their sympathies lie in respect to Hezbollah, Hamas, Osama bin Laden, 9-11, the Bali bombings, the 2005 London underground bombings, and the latest UK threat.
Most of these latest terrorists were British-born. It doesn’t require much nous to work out that there are many with similar mind-sets in Sydney.
During WWII we interned all enemy aliens. We should immediately deport all non-citizen Moslems, and intern the rest. We are at war, and it will be a long one. We probably won’t win. We have far too many fifth-columnists in our midst, and we don’t take the threat from them seriously.
Islam is the religion of peace. But its a conditional peace. Peace will only be achieved when all infidels are either dead or converted.
Mark,
You must show a bit of understanding for CL. Empathy, is after all, one of the qualities that “Lefty Luvvies” are supposed to have to excess.
CL was fixated on continuing his usual game of Bait and Switch. He therefore probably deliberately avoided mentioning the practical measure in Faris’s proposal, to wit., ID Cards revealing the religious affiliation of the holder.
You see, Mark, CL doesn’t want to discuss the practicalities, because it quite puts him off his usual game. And you wouldn’t want to make him think, would you?
On the other hand, maybe Australia is ready for ID Cards that single out RWDBs. Then they could be muzzled like greyhounds. This would be a very positive measure for promoting public security. It may also result in a reduction in sheep bothering.
The case against racial profiling, by Andrew Bolt. Honestly.
I think CL is actually criticising Shaun for accusing people of racism rather than accusing him of racism, and is only guilty of a bit of ambiguous wording. I should leave that for him though.
Andrew Bolt link didn’t work. Try here.
The authorities could have arrested the alleged terrorists weeks ago, but the arrests were delayed until the they could be used for maximum political advantage.
Blair and Bush had planned the terror scare in a series of phone calls that began Friday August 4 and continued through the weekend. They put the finishing touches on their political plot in a phone call early Wednesday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060810/pl_afp/britainattacksairline_060810185330
The timing of the hysteria was even more useful to Blair, who was on the verge of being thrown out of Downing Street the previous night.
As reported in The Scotsman, Labour MP Jim Sheridan quit as parliamentary private secretary to the Ministry of Defence, becoming the first to resign from a government post over the war in the Middle East, saying he could no longer accept that Scottish airports were being used to refuel United States planes carrying “real weapons of mass destruction” to Israel.
The Scotsman article made it crystal clear that Blair had mere days left in power, with some 150 members of parliament demanding Blair’s enemy Jack Straw call the politicians back to London, even though they were on summer break. Ministers were furious at Blair’s handling of the crisis and said they would push for an emergency recall of parliament in a manoeuvre they hoped would trigger Blair’s downfall.
http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=1260&id=1158622006
We could go further (many have). It’s quite clear and obvious that the whole thing was a fabrication, there was no terrorist plot, the timing was just too neat, what a convenient coincidence, you know what I’m sayin’, it’s just another excuse for fascist governments to erode our freedoms and stigmatise Muslims.
Read and believe.
…and silkworm has a new twist. Good, silkworm!
Anthony:
As before, I’m happy to fly Moslem …. so long as at least one of the crew up in their front office keeps one hand near the levers during prayers and doesn’t hand everything over to George ….. and especially if Mecca isn’t on a backbearing …..
The crime “Driving While Black” has finally found its equally questionable cousin: “Flying While Muslim”. I do agree with Captain Whacky’s last comment… and a while ago I wrote a short dialogue expressing a point of view I formulated on terrorism which sorta makes a similar point. I’m not necessarily in complete agreeance with it… but in a way I think it makes an interesting point and wouldn’t mind receiving some feedback. I was prompted to write it by a quote someone attributed to Nietzsche that goes something like “A man’s health should be measured by how much disease he can withstand” (this quote, of course, is not verbatim)
Vote [1] Cliff for Prime Ministerial Speechwriter!
C.L demonstrates that not even a lofty intellect and attractive prose can hide the vile underbelly of a bigot.
Liam:
I’ll second that motion and vote for Cliff too …. provided the terrrorists don’t get to him first because of his victory-winning counter-terrrorist strategy.
Silkworm’s comment illustrates how everything is part of a conspiracy theory for you lefties. Just illustrates how your own minds work. Obviously he has some moles in British and US security who feed him the detail of the inner workings of operations.
Of course just maybe the timing had something to do with the gathering of evidence for subsequent criminal proceedings that would convince even potential jurors like silkworm that there was indeed a conspiracy. Also timing may have been crucial to maximising the number of simultaneous arrests.
Or is he just exhibiting disapointment that the plot was unsuccessful (at least so far).
Katz is still obsessed with me.
I didn’t mention Faris, (neither did the post) – a person I’ve criticised before as a moron.
Err, no, barry, I think you’ll find that most lefties here at LP disagree strongly with silkworm.
Oh really, Mark? I’d sure like to see a few of them comment to that effect and why they disagree with him. Seemed to me to be pretty stock standard anti-Bush anti-Blair ranting so predominent on the left.
I guess i’m insufficiently obsessed with CL to know that he’d ever mentioned Faris.
Nice to hear CL’s opinion of him. I’ll try to remember it.
Meanwhile the entire thread is about Faris’s proposal to have issued ID cards bearing religious affiliation.
Try to stay on-topic CL.
Well, barry, you haven’t been around here for all that long – on a previous thread (I can’t remember which one – perhaps someone will and will link to it) silkworm’s conspiracy theory approach got short shrift. It’s not impossible that the timing of the arrests was politically motivated, but conversely, the flaw in this sort of thinking is that one can almost always point to some sort of political advantage whatever the timing. You’d also need a lot more evidence about political machinations influencing the British security and police authorities, which we don’t have. So Occam’s razor is safest.
It rarely adds to any political argument to assert that political leaders are engaged in some nefarious conspiracy. It’s enough that you oppose their rationales and methods, and in doing so, one is on stronger ground than indulging in unprovable speculation which just becomes a reason for ridicule and a distraction from the substance of the argument.
Yes indeed Mark.
Unless someone leaks and until the elapse of the customary time for the release of public records, there will be no record of conspiracy.
Opponents of particular policies only hurt their own causes by associating themselves with unproven conspiracy theories.
The Left saw how Senator McCarthy destroyed himself by pedalling conspiracy theories. And no sensible leftist would want to be seen dead behaving like Senator McCarthy, would they?
It is in the nature of politics to attempt to extort and seek favour and advantage from events… but this does not mean they provoked or stage managed the event to begin with. Of course… it isn’t far-fetched to suspect that they would if they could. I recall with the plot against that tower in LA that there was a huge discrepancy between when the plot was foiled and when the news was announced by the Administration. There may have been perfectly good reasons for that though…
Its a pity that speech-writer isn’t an electable office
Nonetheless… I couldn’t conceive of any PM liberal or labour who would say that anyway.
“The authorities could have arrested the alleged terrorists weeks ago, but the arrests were delayed until the they could be used for maximum political advantage.”
A more likely explanation is that the arrests were delayed until enough evidence was gathered to secure criminal convictions. But once they thought that the plan was all going ahead, the authorities had to move.
As things stand, it is not clear that the authorities will have enough evidence to convict. They are going to need more than just the say-so of a few informers in Pakistan.
Senator McCarthy?
Faris, Katz. FARIS!
Captain Wacky:
There is NO trade-off whatsoever of traditional rights, responsibilities and liberties for protection against terrrorists ….. except for the lazy, the ignorant, the greedy, the cowardly and the bullying. They can’t cut the mustard so they demand all these unnecessary powers to cover up their own inadequacy.
Being under the threat of terrrorist attack means you have to work harder and longer, you have to be smarter than the terrrorists and frustrate their plots, you have to make things as awkward as you can for them, you have to undermine their prestige and their attractiveness to potential recruits …. that’s all …. no destruction of traditional liberties, no dictatorial powers, no abuse and no brutality needed at all. And what is most important, no sinking to the same level as the terrrorists ehich only serves to strengthen and enrich them and help them win victory over you and your side.
CL, I guess you think this thread is about you? Don’t you? Don’t you?
My reply on Faris is a little further up.
My comments about McCarthy weren’t directed to you or about you.
No CL. Foolish fellow. This thread isn’t about you at all.
Everyone:
I thought you might like this unattributed saying
Hands up too, all those who believe in the Easter Bunny. unforgable ID Cards, Santa Claus and terrrorism being deterred by harsh punishments.
“A more likely explanation is that the arrests were delayed until enough evidence was gathered to secure criminal convictions”
I thought I’d already made that observation, Spiros.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2006/08/12/anybody-planning-to-fly-soon/#comment-126214
I think that it is terrible ideas for many reasons, including the fact that it will be fairly useless, since there is no way that you would declare that you were a Muslim if Muslims were being targetted and you planned to commit an act of terrorism.
Unfortunately, however, I very much doubt that it would infringe s 116. Not only has s 116 been interpreted so narrowly as to be virtually irrelevant, but it says absolutely nothing about requiring the official identification of a person’s religion.
Not true, Katz. I’m where I should be all the time.
So you did Barry.
I was making the point that it’s possible to believe that not every Muslim is a terrorist without resorting to conspiracy theories about the timing of the arrests of those who are.
LOL, CL. In an apricot scarf, no doubt.
Barry ‘everything is part of a conspiracy theory for you lefties’ Rogers and Silkworm: I think you’re getting your lefts and rights mixed up, dudes (embroidered mittens help, I’m told), and you’re making my head spin around like Linda Blair’s. No doubt the projectile green vomit is only a matter of time.
C.L. — in a short spell, I’ll be planning a little thing down in Nova Scotia, to view a total eclipse of the sun. You game?
That’s even better than the West Wing Cliff!
Do you think there was ever a point where islamic terrorism did not have any sovereign institutional backing? I mean, I think there’s room for Afghanistan style responses, depending on the circumstances. But even that should be done with a minimum of hyperbole.
I don’t believe it would a breach of Section 116 of the Constitution to compel individuals to nominate a religious affiliation for the purposes of an identity card.
However, unless there were introduced some highly intrusive system of oath-taking that threatened purjury to anyone who lied, it would be possible for individuals to say what they like, including proclaiming devotion to the famous Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Of course other individuals could be induced or forced under oath to denounce other individuals as Muslims.
“Are you now, or have you ever been, a Muslim?”
Hang about. Those words have a ring of familiarity.
I am sure that you believe that one should oppose political leaders’rationales and methods where one believes they are wrong, and not just for the sake of opposing them, Mark.
The first course involves producing sound arguments based upon facts and an understanding of the issues that are in play. The second course is as deserving of ridicule as asserting that political leaders are engaged in some nefarious conspiracy.
Graham Bell, I don’t doubt for a moment that there wouldn’t be a problem in the world if everyone was as industrious, knowledgeable, selfless, brave and just as you evidently imagine yourself to be. However, it’s a sad fact of life that law enforcement and intelligence agencies will always attract a lesser class of person than whichever infinitely noble profession it is that you belong to (I’m guessing that you don’t work for the AFP or ASIO – please forgive me if I’m being presumptuous). Burdened as such agencies are by human frailties, the fact is that they will solve more crimes and prevent more attacks if they have more powers at their disposal. Otherwise, why give them any powers at all? Why not dissolve all police forces and replace them with people of infinite energy and moral greatness who can solve any problem through the exercise of wisdom and patience?
CL cant J_P_Z, as he is due to be with some underworld spy or the wfe of a close friend, wife of a close friend…
J_P_Z initials of your name?
Sorry to be away for the afternoon and thus the late response:
Only when done without warrants and appropriate oversight, C.L. It’s not the surveillance per se that is the problem, it is the way that it is performed.
As to your objections to my inclusion of the photo-gag, I plead guilty to indulging in some black humour. A very human response to nasty situations, and not one I’m about to apologise for.
If this business of not being allowed to take books in your hand luggage catches on, I will never fly again.
They’re gonna ban books in the cabin???
Regarding your first comment… thanks? I like the West Wing, but it can get a little cheesy… I’m not sure if you’re complimenting me or being a dick
I’m not entirely sure I understand your second comment; could you please elaborate?
Relax, Pavlov’s Cat: apparently we’re likely to adopt the El Al standard of (so I hear) only allowing one paperback per passenger.
Not so good on long fligths for those of us who rattle through an average paperback in only a couple of hours though. I wonder if we can get the stews to act as a casual bookswapping service for the faster readers?
I’d gladly do without books for a few hours if that helps me to get to my destination, Pavlov’s Cat. Nevertheless it’s true to say that the inconveniences we’re all forced to suffer mean the Moslems have already achieved a considerable victory against us.
tig tog says:
A lot of commentary is focussing on the way that the UK found these plotters using traditional policing methods without having to resort to liberty-infringing measures
Many left-liberals jumped to the conclusion that the the Iraq war was the cause of this outrage. But that theory would only make sense if the terrorists hailed from Mesopotamia. And these kind of attacks pre-dated Iraq-attack. How can children brought up to celebrate diversity grow into adults seeking to massacre their fellow citizens?
The terrorists were home-grown, unsettled ethnics. This indicates that multiculturalism probably encourages social conflict. (Not that anything as vulgar as probability would sully the self-image of the average Wet in the moral vanity mirror.)
London Bombings, French Burnings, Cronulla Bashings, Danish Bannings, Heathrow Near Misses – it all ads up to I TOLD YOU SO redux.
I don’t expect any Wets to fess up to their lies or follies. They are in too deep, way over their heads.
The arrests were made with the help of the Pakistani military dictatorship. Other than the they appear to be the result of normal policing methods using civil laws.
Correction, first sentence should read:
[in the case of the 7/7 bombings.]
“It’s also worth noting that this incident has taken the hottest eyes of the international media away from Lebanon/Israel for the time being.”
Not its not!
What a ridiculous comment. These people would have killed as many people as did 9/11 and would have ripped the heart out of international travel. And you are putting some ridiculous hate-speech slur out there that its all a distraction to something…. Which is itself another slur like there is something wrong with an attacked democracy defending itself.
And what do you know about what techniques were used to bust these guys?
American and especially British intelligence aren’t the New York Times. And the British proffessionals who may well have been involved with this bust are not going to betray their country and stress what sort of top secret stuff might have gone into this.
They are not going to telegraph everything to other terrorists. So of course they will emphasis the Police Legwork stuff.
I fly every Tuesday. It sucks quite enough already without having my nose moisturiser taken off me, thank you, particularly when they allow the work experience kid to land the Dash-8 on the homeward leg. I imagine that soon enough all planes will be equipt with a beach shack style library of Agatha Christie and Dick Francis paperbacks. At Crooked Timber a commenter suggested that the logical end of this latest development is making everyone fly nude or in Guantanamo Bay orange jumpsuits.
That said I have thought for a long time that security at regional airports is astonishingly lax – no scanning, no bag checking, nothing – you could take a sawnoff shotgun onto a plane at some country airports & nobody’d know till you landed (if you landed) – and I think it’d be good if something was done about fixing that instead of bloody harrassing Muslims.
And anyone who hangs about Australian airports much will have noticed that security guards openly stalk people wearing turbans, headscarves and other non Judeo-Christian religious gear. It’s pathetic.
Barry – well that is the irony of the “war on terrorism” – its not just inconveniences which we are experiencing, but the erosion of long standing rights. But then maybe that too is also one of the main aims of the terrorists, and unfortunately some in our society are quite happy to comply with their wishes.
I phrased myself badly there, and I can see why you feel I am being accusatory about a deliberate distraction. For the record, I don’t think that there has been some sort of conspiracy to take attention away from Israel/Lebanon or anything else.
My point was that I don’t think there’s a lot of hawks upset that the media’s got something else to talk about for a while, and that I don’t put it past the George and Tony show to play up to the welcome distraction either.
I wouldn’t overemphasize the distraction factor here… watching the PBS Newshour this afternoon both stories got equal coverage (although yesterday’s edition was completely dedicated to the plot… that’s only one day with Lebanon off the radar). Of course… watching the Newshour is not a sufficient sample from which to develop any generalizable statement on the matter, but it’s all the news I’ve been getting lately (I did catch the tail end of the DW TV newshour, which gave a disproportionate amount of time to the commencement of a new season in the Bundesliga, but something tells me that isn’t representative).
I would say, however, that the Israel/Lebanon conflict is not like one of those tiny little wars in Nowheregeopoliticallyimportant-istan whose resolution/outcome will be affected by the fickle attention-span of western TV viewers. In fact, the biggest story today was not the plot, but the Franco-American draft SC resolution.
Apologies in advance for the length of this comment.
In regards to the ‘distraction factor’, I think it’s worth pointing out that Tony Blair is currently holidaying on Cliff Richard’s private island in the Caribbean, Gordon Brown is on paternity leave in Fife and Margaret Beckett (the Foreign Secretary) is travelling around France in a caravan. To my knowledge, none have made public statements on the major news that is the foiled terror attacks.
If any British politician has made gains, it’s surely not laughable Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who was excluded from the last-minute discussions at which the decision to conduct the raids was made, but rather John Reid, the Home Secretary. Reid has been much praised by the British media, while all the others have been condemned for lack of leadership. But Reid is not in-line to succeed Blair, nor is he a global player.
(The Israel/Lebanon crisis has received more than adequate coverage here [I'm an Australian who hangs up her hat in London at the moment]. The Independent, which I admit is not a typical paper, has been publishing Robert Fisk’s exceptional reportage and its wonderful, campaigning covers are evidence that there are some newspaper folk in the Anglophone world that take the role of the media as the fourth estate very seriously.)
The terror situation is quite complicated and not much information has been revealed to the public thus far. In my job at a media monitoring company, I have more access than most.
It is not unlikely that Islamic fundamentalists may have planned terror attacks here. So far, all the signs indicate that something may have been up. Yes, the British police have shown that they will commit acts of folly: the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes in the tube, or the recent Forest Gate raid are proof of that.
On the day that the ‘plot’ was revealed and heavy restrictions put in place at UK and US airports, the market capitalisation of British Airways dived by £220 million. The budget airlines Ryanair and easyJet, which run on low margins and quick turnaround, lost millions because passengers who usually only carry hand luggage were forced to check it in, which slowed processing time, and therefore cost them.
I’m not sure that corporate-loving New Labour would want to threaten profits, unless they believed it absolutely necessary.
In response to the ID cards debate, none of the suspects, who are mostly British-born and quite young, would have even needed fake IDs. Real ones wouldn’t have deterred them, or the 7/7 London underground bombers, who were also British born. The tube bombers were not previously known to M16. Some of those who have been arrested in connection with the liquid bombs were not known to M16 prior to the investigation.
Which leads me to … ‘traditional policing methods’. Traditional? In what sense? Blair has done a good job of burying civil liberties, altering centuries-old legal precepts and taking away power from the people’s elect, parliament. This article in Vanity Fair by Observer journalist Henry Porter (http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/060619roco03) details the changes he has stealthy engineered. It also makes plain why ID cards are a dangerous idea. And it also demonstrates that the new powers given to the police have effectively destroyed the imperative that the government and its servants actions and intentions ought to be transparent.
So, there is a lot we will never know …
As to the distraction issue, I think it’s a brief respite gratefully grasped in the wake of a genuine plot rather than a setup.
The proposed ID cards are ones that show religion, which presumably would automatically filter the 2nd Generation Muslim terrorists for extra searches etc, although perhaps not the recent convert, unless the Pakistani boys got forged IDs showing them as Hindus. So I agree that they would be ineffective in practise as well as your points that they are dangerous in principle.
Traditional in that warrants were sought and issued for the surveillance. The surveillance was not done outside the traditional warrant oversight system (and it is BushCo that wants to have a warrantless surveillance programme). Gleen Greenwald has a good post on this.
This is from the UK Bill of Rights (1998) http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts1998/80042–d.htm#sch1
As you can see, the right to privacy is restricted vis a vis national security and even by the interests of “economic well-being” and “morals”. It is thus not a radical move to seek warrants for the surveillance of suspected terrorists.
Actually, I just got back from Europe and missed this latest scare, though this time I had a stopover in Saigon for 4 days to break up the trip. The last time I flew direct from London, my flight was the first to arrive in Kingsford Smith on Sept 12, 2001.
Pouring all this money into ‘regional airports’, ‘anti-terrorism programs’ and ‘border security’ is clearly a waste of resources. We just need a ‘Give dk.au longer Stopovers On The Way Back From London’ program if we’re going to get tough with the terrorists.
I don’t know if any of you guys remember it, but when US police forces started using profiling as part of their “tough in crime zero tolerance approach” they basically created the offence of “driving whilst being African-American”. There is currently a similar offence in Australia known as “driving whilst being Aboriginal”. If they start profiling on the basis of religious afiliation then we had better give a brief sigh of thanks that we aren’t of “middle-eastern appearance” – whatever that actually means, and that those visits to the mosque all those years ago don’t come back to haunt us. We had also better hope that the British police have actually done a better job this time round. Let’s face it, their track record – one dead Brazilian electrician, two innocent brothers released with grovelling apology after one was shot – hardly inspires any confidence in the forces of law and order. And, if straight out old fashioned police work was/is good enough, one must ask why the Americans are rendering people beyond the reach of the legal system, and the Australians feel the need to create new offences that amount to thought crime.
Cheers
I’m going to fly with Royal Brunei wherever possible. I doubt any of their planes are at risk of being blown up.
No. Not being a dick. More like a sycophant. One thing about the West wing is that it gives you the opportunity to see how things could be handled in an alternative political universe. When you see it in such detail it confirms that another way is not only possible but that it could also work. Same for your hypothetical.
I can’t remember exactly what I was thinking. It was a rection to your pretend pm saying that we should do absolutely nothing. This would seem to work in a situation where terrorism was an isolated phenomenon and not interconnected with more convential conflicts and harbored by nation states. In the context of S11 it doesnt seem enough to just say, ‘let us not be terrified.’ If that makes any more sense.
I’m sure Al Qaeda would rather blow up House of Saud assets first, but I can’t see why they wouldn’t want to destroy some of what they see as ill-gotten riches of any OPEC princes. What makes you think Brunei is immune from Al Qaeda’s rage against OPEC autocrats?
Captain Wackey [at 5:21pm yesterday]
From what I can gather from exciting paperbacks and gripping TV shows: people working in security-and-intelligence cover much the same range of humanity – good , bad or indifferent – that you’ll find in the broader community so I think you’re being a bit rough on them suggesting their field
That might have been so back in Bob Menzies’ time when professional intelligence people, no matter how competent and experienced, had to take a backseat to a weird assortment of “anti-Communist” drunks, dills and ratbags who were appointed on the basis of their political extremism …. but the world has moved on since those bad old days …. though some Coalition dingbats do still try to drag us back there.
Professional people who do thir job properly don’t need extra powers and certainly not powers that come as a result of destroying the very things that distinguish us from the terrrorists.
Captain Wackey [at 5:21pm yesterday]:
Take a look at what Tigtog [at 5:00pm] and Cliff [at 5:35pm] said about warrants.
Basic fact of life – Mr Plod stays well inside the law and gets more successful convictions than does a Hollywood-type action hero whose ammunition expenditure is measured by truckloads ….. and the nice middle-aged lady in Room 99 has probably stopped more terrrorist attacks with her desktop than has a platoon of knuckle-walkers bashing down doors in pre-dawn raids.
There is a need for tough, effective anti-terrrorism laws – and the will, the material resources and the people to implement them …. but there is no need whatsoever for the blatant abuse of power we are getting here that, contrary to intention, actually helps the terrrorists’ cause.
Ah… that’s what I thought. In the context of terrorists possibly developing weapons of mass destruction, I think your point has particular merit. But I take your point generally as well.