The Obama Administration has now announced there will be extra checks on passengers from 14 countries, 13 of them with large numbers of Muslim:
The Nigerians have a point. Nigerians have certain notorious tendencies, as your Spam email folder attests, but blowing themselves up to kill Americans has not been notable among them. America has been quite popular in West Africa over the last decade -- America has higher approval ratings in black Africa than any other large portion of the world.
There have been intermittent clashes between Muslims and Christians within Nigeria for decades, but it has seldom spilled over out of the country.
It would make more sense to focus on Nigerians with Muslim names than Nigerians in general. A Nigerian named Goodluck Jonathan is probably not an Al Qaeda recruit, so patting him down all the time would be a waste of limited security resources.
If Barack Hussein Obama can't propose profiling people with Muslim names, who can?
Nigeria has criticised new security measures for passengers flying to and from the United States as unfair and said they amounted to discrimination against 150 million people.
The US government has announced that travellers from 14 countries, including Nigeria, are to be subjected to extra checks including body pat-downs, after a young Nigerian was accused of trying to blow up a US jet on Christmas Day.
But Nigeria Information Minister Dora Akunyili said that Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, did not have a history of terrorism and such a move could not be justified.
"It is unfair to include Nigeria on the US list for tighter screening because Nigerians do not have terrorist tendencies," Ms Akunyili said.
"It is unfair to discriminate against over 150 million people because of the behaviour of one person."
The Nigerians have a point. Nigerians have certain notorious tendencies, as your Spam email folder attests, but blowing themselves up to kill Americans has not been notable among them. America has been quite popular in West Africa over the last decade -- America has higher approval ratings in black Africa than any other large portion of the world.
There have been intermittent clashes between Muslims and Christians within Nigeria for decades, but it has seldom spilled over out of the country.
It would make more sense to focus on Nigerians with Muslim names than Nigerians in general. A Nigerian named Goodluck Jonathan is probably not an Al Qaeda recruit, so patting him down all the time would be a waste of limited security resources.
If Barack Hussein Obama can't propose profiling people with Muslim names, who can?
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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37 comments:
Is it required for every passenger to have name and identification to board a plane nowadays?
What irks the heck out of me over these profiling measures is that apparently it is OK in polite company to profile millions of people from 14 odd countries, but to profile Muslims is discriminatory and cannot be entertained by polite company.
How the heck did Muslims become a protected class that cannot be discriminated against in isolation? Where was that memo?
Excepting the strange case of Timothy McVeigh, every act of terrorism against the US has been by Muslims. Recognizing and admitting this is fact does NOT make for a slippery slope to internment camps. Why does no one with any amount of real power show any willingness to get serious about dealing with Muslim terrorism?
Steve's quip that the bombings will continue until Muslim moral improves is quite literally the extent of our strategy. It is ridiculous, and completely unfathomable in any other generation.
You gotta love BO. He promised to get our ex-friends to like us again, and all he's doing is pissing off the few friends we still have.
Question: what about people who look arab but aren't?
I'm Indian-American, 100% pro American and anti-Muslim but I'll still get weird looks and got constant extra checks in the first few years after 9/11.
Fair?
Every Muslim, every time. Everyone with a Muslim name every time. Everyone who has Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, etc on their passports and is a Muslim. Search them all every time. Ask them questions. Spend as much time on 'Abdul Hussain Sultani' as we do on 'Martha Paulsen' 89 year old great grandmother born and raised in Fargo.
The Obama Administration is either catering (wisely) to the demands of the airline industry, which is absolutely pissing its pants over the effects new security procedures may have on its bottom line, or else they've finally begun to realize the real danger they have of losing the next election if they don't appear to be more pragmatic and less leftist than they are.
Only Nixon could go to China, and only a black president can endorse racial/ethnic/religious profiling. Whatever else Obama may or may not do in his disastrous tenure, the door for profiling is now open for good.
America has been quite popular in West Africa over the last decade -- America has higher approval ratings in black Africa than any other large portion of the world.
Any idea why? Because of the efforts of the George W Bush Administration, including the creation of PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDs Relief). The popularity of the United States also soared in India during the Bush Administration, too. But Obama will never acknowledge that, nor Democrats in general, because to them "international respect" equates to certain left-leaning, anti-American Western European countries, and not really anyplace else.
To be honest I really couldn't much care what Africa or India think of the US. In fact the increased approval ratings in both places makes me nercous, as it mostly reflects increased foreign aid (for Africa), increased offshoring of jobs to India, and the absurbly high levels of H-1B visas being issued to Indian programmers.
Actually, Steve, it may be that our "stupid" policy of color-blind, so-to-speak, screening may be better, ironically.
Let's say we only checked arab men. Alqaeda is smart enough to recruit women. If we checked all people from arab countries, they would recruit people from non-arab countries.
They would always look for the gap in our security. The current stupid policy leaves them guessing.
To Johnson:
That is the price Indians have to pay for having so many Muslims as co-ethnics.
AllanF:
Perhaps you've also heard of the anthrax mailings? Or the Olympic Park bombing? Or various times where abortionists have gotten whacked by a pro-life terrorist? (*ahem*) Or that noted jihadi known as the unabomber?
Inside the US, what terrorist attacks from Muslims are you thinking of? The successful ones I can think of are the first WTC bombing and 9/11. If you include mass shootings, you can also get the DC snipers (who seemed more like crazy serial killers to me), that wacko kid who shot up the mall in SLC (looked like a generic mass shooting), and Major Hassan (which looks more like terrorism, since there seemed to be an ideological motive).
I think you're fitting the world to your model, rather than the other way around.
Question: what about people who look arab but aren't? I'm Indian-American, 100% pro American and anti-Muslim but I'll still get weird looks and got constant extra checks in the first few years after 9/11. Fair?
Nope - but then life isn't fair. Tough luck.
I'm Indian-American, 100% pro American and anti-Muslim but I'll still get weird looks and got constant extra checks in the first few years after 9/11. Fair?
Nope - but life isn't fair.
It's not fair, for eample, that the average Indian-American is born with a higher IQ than the average non-Indian American, and will go on to earn a higher income in adulthood, either.
If Muslim men, are profiled, then people might reasonably ask if other sorts of people prone to criminal behavior in huge proportions should be profiled.
Profiling of Muslim men = profiling of young Black and Hispanic Men.
THAT Obama will never agree to, nor will ANY Democrat or member of the Establishment. "Better dead than UN-PC."
It will take the entire replacement of the PC-driven elites to create sensible policies.
Yes, the airlines are dead. Stick a fork in them, full body scans and the like are coming. Along with the abusive flight regs: no carry-on luggage, no in-flight entertainment systems, nothing but staring straight ahead the last hour.
This will kill Vegas, Hawaii, and the Bahamas/other Caribbean resorts. Places close to urban centers will pick up driving vacation business, always assuming there isn't another oil shock. [FWIW both WTI and Brent Crude have been flirting with $80, that's the high end of OPEC's 70-80 dollar price band.]
After all, the nation got tipped into recession when gas hit over $4 a gallon and flirted with $5 and people just couldn't make mortgage payments, triggering waves of predictable defaults.
Let me add, that Obama has told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that he plans to make illegal aliens eligible for Obamacare after amnesty.
Obama cannot win with White voters, in 2010, so the solution is instant Amnesty crammed down in 2010, with a permanent Democrat majority by importation of 30-40 million Mexicans as instant Citizens.
It is Obama's dream of an anti-White Black/Hispanic alliance, crushing the White population of America permanently. Of course PC-elites (and lets be honest, Single White Women) highly approve of this. But this is Obama's plan.
Profiling of course of Muslim men just won't fit in an explicit anti-White alliance.
what prevents muslims from lying and saying that they are not muslims?
"Sir, are you Muslim?"
"No, I am not."
when they are committed terrorists, dedicated muslims have a proven track record of breaking all the rules that they are supposed to follow. they drink, they go to strip clubs, they stop praying correctly, they wear the wrong clothes. they blend right in on purpose.
you can't fake your genes. you can easily pretend to be anything other than muslim. some nations with lots of muslims have lots of christians. how do you figure out if somebody from iran is "actually" a muslim or a christian?
how do you handle converts?
"I used to be Christian, a Methodist, but in prison I converted to Islam. Yet in the airport, security is such a hassle for Muslims, that I lie and still say I'm Protestant."
WTF then?!
"Actually, Steve, it may be that our "stupid" policy of color-blind, so-to-speak, screening may be better, ironically.
Let's say we only checked arab men. Alqaeda is smart enough to recruit women. If we checked all people from arab countries, they would recruit people from non-arab countries.
They would always look for the gap in our security. The current stupid policy leaves them guessing."
Not really. There are only so many martyrs to go around. If you profiled against Muslims or people coming from predominately Muslim countries, you would eliminate 90% of the problem. Yes, there are lots of white Muslims with non-Muslim sounding names but not many of them are willing to die for Allah. White Muslim radicals are more than happy to support terrorists but they usually end up as middlemen and media guys like Adam Gadhan. Also, Al Qaeda probably knows that there are some spies in their cells and they may not trust a white convert with such an important mission or with sensitive information.
After 9-11 American flag posters with patriotic sayings went up in the windows of hundreds of Dunkin Donut shops, White Hen pantries, Subway Sandwich stores, and the like, all over Chicago.The reason? They were staffed in large part by those of Indian descent. One unlucky Sikh cabdriver got stabbed in the leg the next day by some enraged dolts who associated him with the hijackers. The American masses out there are way too dopey and insular to make any sense out of all this, if they even cared to. Most Americans probably never knew there was a place called Yemen. Now, however, they'll all scream to be protected from the menace of the scary Yemenis. They're coming to get us.
"The current stupid policy leaves them guessing."
Nah. The current stupid policy leaves them able to draw upon their largest and most motivated pool of recruits. Yeah, they could recruit European (e.g., Bosnian) Muslims, but there would be fewer of them. And they could recruit women, but again, there would be fewer of them.
Common sense is remarkably powerful when you let yourself use it. The Israelis, for example, can't very well ban all Muslims from the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. So they just ban men under age 50 or whatever. In theory, could Hamas start recruiting 51 year old suicide bombers? It's possible, but there's not going to be a big pool of them.
It's a step forward, come on.
Thing is, only democrats can get out with this kind of thing.
Vote democrat, I say.
Nah. The current stupid policy leaves them able to draw upon their largest and most motivated pool of recruits.
Also, a "smart" policy would have to be administered by the current batch of gatekeepers. Telling them to look for arab men would make them complacent about checking non-arab men. You've got to design a system that works when implemented by stupid lazy people.
I vote for the stupid policy. (again)
I'm surprised that the Unted Kingdom (which probably now has more muslim pakistani births than ethnic English births), is not on that list.
Anon:
"I'm surprised that the Unted Kingdom (which probably now has more muslim pakistani births than ethnic English births), is not on that list."
That's true of several northern & midlands cities, and probably London, but not England as a whole, yet. Looks like a bit under half of all births are ethnic-minority; maybe half of those are Pakistani Muslim. However the Pakistani & Bangladeshi population doubles each generation simply from chain-migration; getting spouses from Pakistan, which is not dependent on births. It doubles again from the birth rate, so roughly x4 increase every 20 years or so. There is also significant illegal immigration, taking it to around x5-x6. And that's not counting all the asylum seekers, such as Afghans and Pashtun Pakistanis claiming to be Afghan. Then there are the Somalis... *sigh*
"I'm surprised that the Unted Kingdom (which probably now has more muslim pakistani births than ethnic English births), is not on that list."
+1
I saw a documentary about a mercenary plot to unseat the Equatorial Guinea government at Xmas.
One of the black soldiers was called Victor Dracula.
"It would make more sense to focus on Nigerians with Muslim names than Nigerians in general. A Nigerian named Goodluck Jonathan is probably not an Al Qaeda recruit, so patting him down all the time would be a waste of limited security resources."
The point should not be to pat them down, but to deny them a visa to enter the U.S. in the first place. And I don't want non-muslim Nigerians to emigrate here any more than muslim Nigerians.
When people talk about the chilling effect that such profiling has, my attitude is: that's exactly the point. I don't want to make muslims, or indeed most foreigners who want to emigrate here, welcome. I want to make them feel unwelcome, so that they stop coming here. Since our government has outsourced our immigration policy to foreigners, this is now the best we - we, as a people - can do.
Johnson --
I'm also Indian-American. If you are pro-American, you need to make sacrifices for your country.
Fact is, people of Middle Eastern/South Asian appearance with Muslim last names are just not hassled enough at our airports. And everyone else is hassled way too much.
Now yes, Raj Patel is not Mohammed Atta. Raj Patel is likely to just be some desi dude with a laptop and a website. He may rage against racist whitey at Sepia Mutiny but he is not going to be blowing up any planes.
So yeah -- the better and more granular the profile, the less you will be inconvenienced. But that means MORE intelligence about group differences rather than less.
And in the near term it also means sucking it up and taking a (relatively minor) hit for the greater good.
White guys currently lose their jobs over affirmative action. While transitioning from "no profiling" to "excellent profiling", we may spend a few more minutes at the airport -- but the overall line will be shorter, so it would probably be a net win anyway.
I fly more often than most people here and I personally think that fear of flying terrorism in the US is so amazingly over-rated that only loner psycho kidnappers are less of a concern. Nonetheless, I can't help but be disappointed by Steve and the gang here by the fact that somewhere less than 90% of the comments say, "Bravo! I can't believe Obama did it. I still think he's wrong on every other subject and even here I think he didn't go far enough but, by God, I gotta hand it to him. I never thought he'd do it and I was wrong. The guy probably isn't a rabid America-hating muslim communist after all."
Rightly or wrongly, I like this crowd in the steveospjhere but every so oftewn I wish this bunch were a bit more open-minded and honest than everybody else and able to see past their own biases.
> If you profiled against Muslims or people coming from predominately Muslim countries, you would eliminate 90% of the problem. <
Only 90%? That's not good enough! If we're going to have a racist policy and hurt the feelings of some brown people, then that policy must be *** 100% *** effective. Preferably 150% effective. Until we can attain that, let's stick with 50/50 (randomness).
I'll bet the left wouldn't object to profiling if a cross was burned on the front lawn of a black family's house in Mississippi.
I'm Indian-American, 100% pro American and anti-Muslim but I'll still get weird looks and got constant extra checks in the first few years after 9/11.
Fair?
Yes.
"I'm Indian-American, 100% pro American and anti-Muslim but I'll still get weird looks and got constant extra checks in the first few years after 9/11.
Fair?"
Here's an idea: Tack a $10 profiling fee onto the cost of every plane ticket. For each flight, all that money is put into a "profile pool."
Any young man with a ticket for the flight who is Arab, Muslim, or looks Arab or Muslim gets strip searched but gets to share equally in the profile pool.
So if a flight has 100 passengers including 2 young male Arabs, each one gets strip-searched but gets a quick 500 bucks for the inconveience.
Most Americans probably never knew there was a place called Yemen.
Wonder how many Yemenis know there's a place called "Poland"?
I have to pick Poland, because I'm fairly certain most Yemenis are fully aware of the Great Satan as well as the most generous of the European welfare states.
Yep - even the most educated of Americans tend not to learn all that much about places and people that haven't contributed diddly to the advancement of the human race.
Obama cannot win with White voters, in 2010, so the solution is instant Amnesty crammed down in 2010, with a permanent Democrat majority by importation of 30-40 million Mexicans as instant Citizens.
Well, that's one way to start a civil war.
The main problem with black Africans coming to US is not terrorism but (1) welfare dependency (2) crime (3) affirmative action over whites. In time, they become part of the black American community, vote for Democrats, and work with radical Jews to further de-white-ize this country.
Steve,
You need to get a better filtering system for your comments. My comment was deleted and it wasn't even offensive. You let WAY TOO MANY anti-Jewish and anti-Black posts get through. What's the deal?
People, we're not this Stupid are we? I mean are we really?
I suggest you look at the picture on that link...read the article...and then look again...and again.
The commentator who says that even the "most educated of Americans" might not know about places like Yemen, which in fact have long histories, must be in the bracket somewhere below "most educated". Substitute "not very" for "most".
You need to get a better filtering system for your comments. My comment was deleted and it wasn't even offensive. You let WAY TOO MANY anti-Jewish and anti-Black posts get through. What's the deal?
Whereas some of us suspect that the anti-Jewish, anti-black, pro-white sentiments are constantly being trimmed back to present a greater balance in the comments. One that might not be there otherwise.
Of course I can't prove it.
The commentator who says that even the "most educated of Americans" might not know about places like Yemen, which in fact have long histories, must be in the bracket somewhere below "most educated". Substitute "not very" for "most".
OK, because you said it and it was very mildly clever (substitute "not at all" for "very mildly") then it must be true.
I didn't deny Yemen had a long history. I denied that it had contributed much to human advancement.
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