Posted on 07/16/2004 6:28:10 PM PDT by quidnunc
What do you make of this story about 14 Syrian musicians whose in-flight bathroom use was more coordinated than a synchronized swimming routine? It sounds a lot like the kind of dry run James Woods witnessed and which I recounted in this excerpt from The Face Of The Tiger. The other point it seems to confirm is the sheer constraints under which an advanced western society can wage war in an age of political correctness. It’s not just the weediness of Norm Mineta but, as I note below, a broader unwillingness to speak the truth about who it is who’s trying to kill us. I don’t see why, for example, US Immigration would refuse entry to a harmless British novelist Ian McEwan on the grounds that the honorarium for his speech in California was too much – a law they invented on the spot, by the way – but wave through bands of Syrian musicians to tour the land. America barely has diplomatic relations with Syria. Is it really so necessary to maintain open access for Syrian “artists”?
When political correctness got going in the Eighties, the laconic wing of the conservative movement was inclined to be relaxed about it. To be sure, the tendency of previously pithy identity labels to become ever more polysyllabically ornate (“person of colour”, “Native American”) was time consuming, but otherwise PC was surely harmless. Some distinguished persons of non-colour, among them Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, even argued that conservatives should support political correctness as merely the contemporary version of old-fashioned courtliness and good manners.
Alas, after September 11th, this position seems no longer tenable. Instead, we have to ask a more basic question: Does political correctness kill?
Consider the extraordinary memo sent three weeks ago by FBI agent Coleen Rowley to the agency’s director Robert Mueller, and now all over Time magazine. Ms Rowley works out of the Minneapolis field office, whose agents, last August 16th, took action to jail a French citizen of Middle Eastern origin. Zacarias Moussaoui had shown up at a Minnesota flight school and shelled out 8,000 bucks in cash in order to learn how to fly 747s, except for the landing and take-off bit, which he said he’d rather skip. On investigation, he proved to have overstayed his visa and so was held on an immigration violation. Otherwise, he would have been the 20th hijacker, and, so far as one can tell, on board United Flight 93, the fourth plane, the one which crashed in a Pennsylvania field en route, as we now know, to the White House. In Mr Moussaoui’s more skilled hands – Flight 93 wound up with the runt of Osama’s litter — it might well have reached its target.
Ms Rowley and her colleagues established that Moussaoui was on a French intelligence watch list, had ties to radical Islamist groups, was known to have recruited young Muslims to fight in Chechnya, and had been in Afghanistan and Pakistan immediately before arriving in the US. They wanted to search his computer, but to do that they needed the okay from HQ. Washington was not only uncooperative, but set about, in the words of Ms Rowley’s memo, “thwarting the Minneapolis FBI agents’ efforts”, responding to field-office requests with ever lamer brush-offs: How could she be sure it was the same guy? There could be any number of Frenchmen called “Zacarias Moussaoui”. She checked the Paris phone book, which listed only one. After September 11th, when the Minneapolis agents belatedly got access to Moussaoui’s computer, they found among other things the phone number of Mohammed Atta’s roommate.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Chechnya sovereign mother territory?
1830s Czar Nicholas I invades Caucasus, meets fierce resistance.
1859 Russia conquers, incorporates Caucasus.
1917 Russian Revolution, Dagestan (including Chechnya) declares its independence.
1944 Stalin deports thousands of Chechens to Siberia and Kazakhstan, on suspicion of collaborating with Germany.
1991 Soviet Union collapses, 14 regions become independent nations. Dzhokhar Dudayev elected president of Chechnya. Dudayev declares Chechnya independent. Russian President Boris Yeltsin refuses to recognize Chechen independence, sends troops. Confronted by armed Chechens, troops withdraw
Interesting.
They are incredibly thorough. They look for anything out of the ordinary. My wife and I have different last names on our passports due to our being married just ten years and when she went to renew hers she did not have an original marriage cert. so they told her she could not make the change.
So the Israelis siezed on this at every opportunity and pulled us aside. We were with a mission but arrived and departed on our own schedule so we didn't have the protection of the group. She's also quite semitic looking and I'm sure that didn't help.
We had some problems with her papers while over there and had to go to E. Jeruslem to the consulate. That was fun. Standing in line in an arab area with a bunch of arabs. We didn't know enough to travel to the Tel Aviv consular office.
You wouldn't want to do what you did in '98 now. Actually you were not safe then. Now you would be a real bullseye.
I'll probably never go back to Israel. I found it a litter strewn ugly place with way too much tension. Once in a while I got that 'biblical' feeling here and there but it didn't last long with all the trash strewn everywhere.
ping to 77.
ping to 77
I am sort of intrigued by the patriots on the thread who seem to get a kick out of harassing security by carrying metal cards that set off alarms, refuse to take off boots, are intentionally making the process harder. That hardly seems like actions of adults who want security to work.
That said, I fly about twenty times a year on business. TSA seems to be doing a good job to me. It is not their fault that they are hamstrung by pc concerns. Sure, Israeli screeners would do a better job. But is anyone seriously thinking there are enough Israelis to do the job.
I've never been harassed. I've checked out things being the nosey person I am and the only thing amiss I ever saw was a person wanding a baby's diaper. Perhaps it depends on where the airport is.
how about just "American"?
lose the hyphens already.
I agree. Works for me.
Maybe I should've clarified that to "screeners who abuse their power". My mistake.
And they are looking for the wrong people, every time they search people who don't fit the profiles.
No, it's not bringing Israeli screeners here to do the job, but to TRAIN the government-union ass-monkeys we've allowed the Daschles of this country to hire at taxpayer expense. That's the problem.
Since we're hamstrung with this politically-correct hogwash, I believe ANY screener who intentionally makes it hard on an average-looking white guy, should him/herself be subjected to a humiliating, pointless shakedown.
It comes from FR, like all good lines.
Total ditto. What you said. I stop short of hyphenation.
Dan
It's going to take a while to get this thing squared away,screenout the bad screeners, bring some common sense to the system(Common sense in a gov. Bureaucracy, don't hold your breath). I just hope and pray that it won't take another 9-11 to bring it about.
I think that is quite true. Anyone could, wittingly or unwittingly, help terrorists. Exclusive reliance on profiling would be stupid and dangerous. But if, as this story – at least seems – to imply, suspicious behavior is ignored (perhaps because of the ethnic identity of the people engaging in the activity) then something is wrong. I do not know what the ‘rules of engagement’ for air marshals are, but this type of behavior by any ethnic group seems suspicious.
We know they are trying to hit us – it will likely be in ways we have not thought of.
I prefer Useless Americans. Based on the ones who always seem to make the news, including the Kennecott man fiasco. Whiners and controlling useless twits, all...
But not the right to jack around a whole culture to their changing whims. And I reserve the right to call them anything I want. No problem.
It's not rocket science.
Making failure to go along with the name change "racist" or literally claiming to be dissed, followed by tribal primitive behavior (physical threats, or worse) clearly identifies the practice as intimidation.
It's not as if black people had a say in this country as to what they were called. It's not about changing whims. Did you ever stop to think about the reasons behind it? I'm not threatened by somone who wants to call themselves 'african-american'. I think the hypenations are silly. What culture is being jacked around? American culture? I don't see how someone saying they're hyphenated something is jacking around a culture except to say they'd be separating themselves from American culture at large. Staying in one's own little circle is hardly healthy.
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