Will racial profiling become nessecery?

[Kamika]

I just read that Al quaida said that there will be a BIG attack in the US or Japan no later then Februari.. And I'm seriously starting to get abit scared.

The Bushjunta doesn't really care when a muslim country gets blown up.. I mean the freepers are practicly cheering that Turkey got blown up. But when Al quaida starts blowing stuff up in Usa or even Japan and the deathtoll is around 200 civilians how can we defend ourselves from something like that?

I know people will say we need to stop meddling in the Middle east etc and I agree, but that won't stop the current terrorists, just future generations.

And I can't come up with any other alternative then racial profiling to stop terrorist acts like that.

I'm just wondering if anyone else has some alternatives, because this stuff in Turkey really got me worried. They have absolutely no problems with killing civilians.




Anyway please don't ban me about this.. if it's out of line please just warn me.

[stopthegop]

1. if there is another big attack in the US

things will change...think deportation of ME Nationals (not Isreal)and such...revisit Koramatsu (sp?), the SCOUS case on FDR's internment camps

[sujan]

3. I dont believe the US can survive another big attack

especially the US economy.

[Karenina]

2. Your post is pretty out there.

Your government also seems to have no problems killing civilians, including a good number of domestic ones... What flavor kool-aid did you swill down?

[rucky]

4. Feburary's a short, cold month

stay home if you're scared, but don't try to legislate your fears on other people.

[buddhamama]

5. racial profiling is currently in practice

of persons from the Middle East.that you're okay with it bothers me.

[bicentennial_baby]

6. Same here

Racial profiling= No good

Hey Buddhamama! How ya doing? :hi:

[buddhamama]

9. i am well !

and yourself? it is good to see you. you never let me down,bicentennial_baby. i can always count on you to be fair.

and we share the same avatar ;-)

[Kamika]

7. I'm not okay with it

That's why I'm wondering if anyone has any alternatives because it's the only solution I can come up with

[buddhamama]

14. i can't offer up any alternatives

except learn from past mistakes. of course, those past mistakes would be easier to learn from if we actually knew what they were, but the government rather us not know.


btw, sorry if i assumed you were for it. the fact that you asked if racial profiling might become necessary, as if it weren't already going on, made me to jump to conclusions.

[Karenina]

33. Hmmm... past mistakes...

Anyone ever wonder how different our trajectory would be had the U.S., instead of bombing Afghanistan, sent in a paramilitary POLICE force to deal with the Taliban while concurrently pouring say, what goes down the toilet in Iraq in 45 days into infrastucture, food, schools and medical care? But NOOOOO...

[AP]

20. see post 18

The FBI wasn't using racial profiling to get all those GOOD clues about terrorists which the higher-ups were aggressively ignoring.

[Karenina]

28. Solution to WHAT???

Think, just for a moment about all the "security" imposed by the airlines in the last 2 years. Have they caught ONE "turrist?" They've hassled, humiliated, delayed, screwed up, cancelled, ripped off, misidentified, kidnapped und so weiter und sofort, BUT HAVE THEY CAUGHT ONE "TURRIST?"

Who defines what "terrorism" is? Are Iraqis who attack American troops (you know the ones who have beaten down their doors, shot their family members, pillaged their homes) "terrorists?" How do you identify one by looking at someone's outward features? Better question might be "Why are some so profoundly enraged that they are willing to die to commit atrocious destructive acts?"

The United States is the NUMBER ONE terrorist nation in the world. THAT is an historical reality, check your local listings for film at 11. Once you really check that, perhaps you'll realize that NO AMOUNT of psychic or physical violence against the "other" can protect you.

[Kamika]

31. I dont think they're there to catch terrorists

They are there so terrorists will KNOW it's impossible to get on board a plane

[Karenina]

41. But my dearest Kamika...

Even THAT isn't the case. Remember the "shoe bomber" or the recently discovered boxcutters stashed on planes, or the various and sundry who have exposed airline security for the sham that it is?

Better to ask, "WHY is the boogie man out to get me?" How can you "profile" him if you don't know what he looks like or where he's from?

[jiacinto]

8. I don't like the idea and am against it

But then again public opinion will eventually be so in favor of it to the point where it probably will happen.

I think it's unamerican and that Al Qaeda will then get non-Muslim people to do their dirty work for them. Also a lot of Muslims are fair skinned and do have blonde hair and blue eyes.

[Scott Lee]

10. I've seen this talk before. Maybe Franks was right.

In the shell shocked days following Sept. 11 2001, I was doing my IRC thing in a political chatroom and one of my long time allies, a great liberal woman, was beside herself with despair. She said "I don't see any way out of this. We have to round up all the Arabs and put them in camps." I couldn't believe what I was reading. I asked her to repeat herself and she did, this time with a vicious insult on me attached. What could possibly have turned this woman into such a 180 degree different, anti-social fear factor rightist?

The answer was: one direct terror hit.

Gen. Tommy Franks, in a recent magazine interview, gave a no holds barred stone cold sober observation that our Constitution is only one more solid terror hit from being completely destroyed or rendered invalid. We laughed at him. But check out Kamika's post. Maybe he wasn't so wrong. Maybe good liberal people are right on the edge of becoming fearful concentration camp advocates; all they need is a powerful enough assault to scare them.

Kamika, the world isn't a safe place. Anywhere. But think for a moment that caving on your dearest held ideals based on the acts of terrorists is exactly what they seek to achieve. Do you really want to give it to them so easily? Do you really want to help the Bush Junta achive their goal of a martial nation and complete rule? Can you see that there is in fact a symbiotic relationship between terror and fascism?

I really hope that you're just thinking outloud, and not making a case to suspend civil rights just because you're "scared".

[Maddy McCall]

12. Exactly! Ask Japanese Americans how they liked being racially profiled

in WWII. That is one of the darkest moments in US history, besides the "racial profiling" done to American Indians from the 16th through the 20th century.

The paranoia in US society so resembles the 1940s--won't be long before Congress appoints another HUAC to deal with traitors, either.

[atreides1]

11. It's An Interesting Concept

The problem is how do you tell the difference between an Muslim and a Mexican, some Muslims are black, white, asian, where do you draw the line.

You are the type of person that Bush and Co. love, you're afraid, and from your post you are ready to let that fear control your life. Let's face facts there is little short of Martial Law that will stop
terrorists activity, and even that's not a guarantee.

Look at what has recently happened in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and both of those countries have tighter security then the US, they were
not able to stop the attacks.

And yes we need to put a stop to our bias treatment of Israel over all
of the Muslim countries, that is one problem, the other is that the
mission to stop Al Queda was halted before it gained any results.
Bush and Co, had no interest in Bin Laden, he just happened to provide
a reason for our Chickenhawk in Cheif to direct his sights on Iraq, as
he was planning to do all along.

As has been seen by the British war against the IRA, and the IDF against the Palestinians, military force versus terrorist is a flawed
plan. The Germans, French, and Italians fought terrorists in their countries with parmilitary POLICE FORCES, not the military.

The alternatives are to give up our freedom forever, and hide in fear as you seem to want to do, or to say that our freedom is more important then security. As Benjamin Franklin said "They who would give up freedom for safety, are not deserving of either."

Do you really think that this administration would return our freedoms if we allow them to take them from us. As for myself I would rather live free in a dangerous world then to live safe in a prison.

And I would guess that there are others who feel as I do, just as there are those that feel like you do.


"IT IS BETTER TO DIE ON YOUR FEET, THEN TO LIVE ON YOUR KNEES"

EMILIANO ZAPATA

[Kellanved]

49. at the moment

The Germans, French, and Italians fought terrorists in their countries with parmilitary POLICE FORCES, not the military.

The Conservative opposition demands a change in the constitution to allow the military to be deployed as police force . Especially the attacks in Istanbul sent them into overdrive on the issue. What the use of soldiers, who are not trained in policework, should accomplish is left unclear. The arguments are that a soldier can be ordered to jeopardize his life - a policeman can't- and that the borders might get overrun in "forced immigration".
Rather idiotic, if you ask me - especially the border part, as the current ruling is sufficent to act in such a -inprobable - case.

[NNN0LHI]

13. Did you support racial profiling of tall, blonde, blue eyed caucasians?

After McVeigh blew up the Murrah federal building in Oklahoma?

Don

[Paschall]

25. Isn't "racial profiling" just a cop's PC word for...

...legalized discrimination?

The concept itself is totalitarian.

[Snow]

15. Other than the ethical considerations,

it doesn't work. Far too many false positives. It's like the idea of requiring AIDS testing for marriage licenses. The disease is so uncommon, that even if you have a very good test, say 99.9% sensitivity and specificity (AIDS tests are pretty close to that good; terrorism tests aren't even in that universe) the false positives completely overwhelm you. I've seen this argument presented occassionally (ie the point I'm making) especially against all the airport nonsense, but most people really don't get it. If you like I can show you my trusty teaching slides on the topic, but try it yourself. Make up a 2x2 table, say with a million people in it. SPlit them up in columns of terrorists and not terrorists. Assign that split on whatever portion of the population you think are terrorists. Then for the rows, decide how good your screening test is. Split the same million people up on terrorist test positive and terrorist test negative. Now you've got the outside margins of your 2x2 table. Then fill in the 4 cells of table - true positives upper left, false positive upper right, false negatives lower left, true negatives lower right. It'll be very revealing. You've got to have a fairly common condition before a good test works. And a crappy test never works.

[DuctapeFatwa]

16. The voting class supports Gitmo, they'll support internment

That's one of the reasons for the Gitmo project, after all, to help people get used to it.

There may be some flurry of posts on here and similar boards by a few people who are made uncomfortable when neighbors and co-workers are led away, but the voters will adjust, and the regime will help, with TV campaigns that stress the special protection that people of Middle Eastern ancestry and/or appearance need at this difficult time, acknowledge that while not perfect, it's a good first step, along the lines of the ads running for the Medicare bill.

You can also expect politicians of both parties to stress the humane conditions of Gitmo and its annexes, there was a piece on Japanese internment not too while back that stressed that the US has such a committment to human rights that they even fed the Japanese "internees."

While the coming internment project may not go quite that far, expect to see CNN taken to shoot video of a sample cage.

[NNN0LHI]

17. First they came for the...

In Germany they came first for the Communists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me--and by that time no one was left to speak up.

[AP]

18. Recent studies on racial profiling have concluded it's a waste of time

and resources.

If I understand the logic, it's this: it may be the case that, say, more black men commit some particular crime, however, if you made a list of the indicators of the crime, race might be the fifth or sixth, tenth, or 100th most common factor. So, you might be ignoring a lot of other good clues just to go after black people, and then you find that 99.5% of your time is spent talking to people who are totally innocent.

Here's an analogy:

A cop is parked on the side of the road. He wants to stop speeders. He thinks that most speeders are black. So he stops every black person who goes by. Once he stops them, he discovers that only 1 in 100 was speeding. Meanwhile, a dozen other speeders who aren't black go by. At the end of the day, he's issued maybe two tickets for speeding, both to black people, yet 50 speeders drove right by him.

So, what are the best ways to detect speeders. Well, you have this great, expensive technology called a radar gun, which ignores race, but captures all speeders. You should just be using that to get the speeders.

Now appy that to terrorism. There are tons of great indicators of terrorism. Are people from ME countries getting wired thousands of dollars, enrolling in flight schools run by Dutch international criminals? Are low level FBI agents getting tons of clues from their normal investigative methods? Well, rather than stop every ME person in America, why aren't we using standard detection methods?

When you hear that your government is using race as their criteria for finding terrorists, think of that cop using race to try to find speeders. We're going to be fucked if we start doing that to find terrorists.

[_Jumper_]

19. ALL MUSLIMS ARE NOT BROWN-SKINNED WITH DARK HAIR

MANY Arabs are fair-skinned with light hair. Most Muslims are not Arab. Would racist profiling have stopped these people:

Eric Rudolph
John Walker
Richard Reid
The snipers
The traitor marine
Chaplain Yee
Jose Padilla

Every "racial" group is represented, except for Native Americans.

That being said, I believe that after the next attack there will be talk of concentration camps but it will not happen. The attack that occurs thereafter will cause concentration camps.

Oh Canada...

[AP]

22. And all muslims aren't terrorists.

There are literally hundreds of characteristics which correlate much better to terrorist tendancies than religion.

1 in 100 million muslims might be terrorists. But, it looks like 19 of 20 of men who moved to the US to go to flight school, whom the FBI were on to, who got wired thousands of dollars from shady characters, were terrorists.

Don't you people read books? Watch TV? CSI? Hello? Criminal invesigation is practically a science. There are way better tools than targeting people because of their religion.

[DuctapeFatwa]

23. The point is not to make them secure, it's to make them FEEL secure

As someone pointed out, if "Al Qaeda" wanted to "attack," it would be a very simple matter to employ a blond operative.

The point is not to prevent "attacks," but to build support for the regime and unify the voting classes in their shared fear and loathing of "the others."

It's a time-honored successful strategy. Worked for Hitler.

[_Jumper_]

26. You have told me you will stay in America

Are you really willing to be interned because of principle?

[DuctapeFatwa]

27. I think you're confusing me with someone else, I haven't said anything

about my intentions, geographical or otherwise ;)

[_Jumper_]

29. My mistake

I suppose it was PsychoDad who said that.

[_Jumper_]

30. Dupe

.

[Bronco69]

21. When nothing happens

and we have forgotten that they said there would be an attack "no later than February", the bushites will issue another statement in February saying there will be an attack "no later than June." And then September, and then November, and so on. Don't buy into it! They want you to stay scared and it's working!

[BlackFrancis]

24. It wouldn't work..

They would just start recruiting Muslims from South America (and there are more than most people think) and if we somehow did what is supposed to be impossible and shut off the flow of illegal immigration from the Texas Border they would switch to European Muslims (potentially a much better recruiting pool, diaspora Muslims feel much more like they have something to prove).

[DuctapeFatwa]

32. Oh the Lou Dobbs plan would include all those frightening Mexicans

Seriously, you would be surprised how many Caucasians can't tell a Mexican from a Venezuelan from a Yemeni from a Pashtun. It can either be annoying or a source of high amusement and hilarity, depending on your personality and mood.

[Karenina]

42. BWHAHAHAHAHA!!! (sputter, spit!)

:hi: HI DF!!! :hi: Yes, I was wondering from whence that mind-boggling gobbledygook sprang! Forget pegging nationalities by appearance- Americans have NO CHANCE there. I'm alway amused when they can't HEAR the difference between a Brit and an Aussie who are both prone to taking offence at being confused!

[DuctapeFatwa]

43. LOL I think Asians may get it worse

There used to be this website, alllooksame or something, that had this test, with pics of people who were ethnic Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Thai, etc., and you were supposed to look at the pic and say which, then you got your score.

From what I observed, Caucasians tended to get the lowest scores, but it was good because it surprised them and made them think ;)

[Kamika]

46. how true

People think I'm chinese or vietnamese, theres a BIG difference in appearance between north asians.. japanese, koreans(like me) and southern ones, like chinese, or thai. Yet everyone think's we're chinese heh

[Snow]

51. You're Korean??

I think I heard that once, somewhere - so why the Japanese screen name? to really hide the ol' identity, or do you like & appreciated Japanes culture (much to the likely distress of your elders)?

[BlackFrancis]

47. the suprising thing to me was..

Asians did better but they were still wrong nearly half the time :shrug:

[Karenina]

48. That was fun!

And difficult! Got 50%!!! Probably would do better if they were people in a room as a picture doesn't give you the body language clues.

[DuctapeFatwa]

50. oh cool! It is back up!

:party:

[Uzybone]

34. Bush issues Al-Qaeda warning

"progressives" like Kamika begin to wonder if racial profiling is neccesary.

Kamika cant you see what they are doing? What next are you willing to consider for the sake of "security". Who was it that said (paraphrasing) those who would choose security over liberty deserve none?

[_Jumper_]

36. Franklin made that statement

Kamika has made Pat Bunchan-type statements about Muslim immigrants in Europe in the past. There is more here than meets the eye.

Kamika, do you or do you not support racist profiling?

[SOteric]

35. I suspect it's possible to put some alternatives in place,

but I'm dubious that the alternatives coming to mind are 'better' as an option than racial profiling. (Which is not to suggest I find it a desirable option).

I not that Israel has had systems of profiling for decades now which do not rely solely on racial clues, especially since the Israeli population is not always substantially different in appearance than that of their foes.

What they trade, however, are certain freedoms.

[smallprint]

37. No, but spell checking may become "nessecery"

by no later than "Februari"

[Maddy McCall]

39. I think you are being abit hostile

;-)

[Kamika]

40. lol

oh plz

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

38. Seems to me that 9/11 WAS avoidable given the proposals made by

the Hart Rudmann study.
I also note that an alert INS agent caught the millenium bomber and that intelligence DID have info on nearly all the terrorists prior to their arrival in the US.

It does seem that we have sacrificed LOCAL law enforcement for the cost of this war which was guaranteed to INCREASE terrorism.

Things will always happen. The MAGNITUDE of that which happens depends on the availability in the general population of explosives, the commitments we make to security at our borders, in our airports and the resources we devote to our local law enforcement.

This has all been used as a rather deliberate pretext for restricting freedoms when in fact, it was managable.

[greekspeak]

44. This post represents just how successful Bush-style politics is

One of us, suggesting that the only alternative to terrorist attacks is racial profiling. I thank my stars that the terrorists were not charged with being gay, or I might have some jackboots rapping on my door in the middle of the night to ship me off to "camp." If this Bush II era political trick is so successful that one of us is caught, how can we wonder that America is so cowed?

So-called "brown people" are not a terrorist threat because of their skin color! As many posters have said, not all muslims are of arabic descent, nor are they all brown-skinned. The problem is the same problem that always is....HATE. I am really depressed having read this post.

[DuctapeFatwa]

45. A more appropriate question would be: How many people will you

hide in your basement when the day comes?