Skip to main content
Catching up on old news....



F.B.I. Told of Worry Over Flight Lessons Before Sept. 11



WASHINGTON, May 3 — An F.B.I. agent in Phoenix told counterterrorism officials at the bureau's headquarters last July that he had detected an alarming pattern of Arab men with possible ties to terrorism taking aviation-related training, and urged a nationwide review of the trend, according to F.B.I. officials. ...



... Most Middle East countries send pilots from their commercial airlines and their military to train in the United States. At the time, F.B.I. officials believed that a study of the Arab presence at American flight schools could be done as only a long-term project taking one to two years. No action had been taken on the issue by Sept. 11.



F.B.I. officials said there was reluctance at the time to mount such a major review because of a concern that the bureau would be criticized for ethnic profiling of foreigners. Bureau officials were also aware of the obstacles in asking colleges and universities to cooperate on such a sweeping review of students without specific evidence that they were guilty of any crimes.
Profiling is a legitimate tool of law enforcement, period. Sometimes a given crime/criminal profile is going to include a racial element, but that single element alone is not the entire profile. When it is, that is "racial profiling."



If you see a string of actions/crimes/terrorist "incidents" that are all carried out by members of a specific group, that is not racial profiling. That is a straight description of the facts from each case, outlining their common characteristics. So many minority "advocacy" groups have distorted this simple fact for their own ends, apparently in an effort to remove an effective, efficient tool from law enforcement's arsenal.



I wish that some senior members of law enforcement--and the administration--would stand up and say these things aloud. You have four airliners hijacked, all were hijacked by men of "Middle Eastern descent," plus a string of other common denominators. That makes a profile, and if that profile pops up at another airliner that individual deserves special scrutiny. It's not racism, it's a reality based on a pattern of behavior.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Not the Hero We Deserve, But the Hero We Need

The Dark Knight is the best film I’ve seen in years. Not just the best “superhero” film, but the best film of any type. It’s not perfect, not quite a masterpiece, but it’s flaws are, to me, tiny and overwhelmed by the time the film ends. While relatively bloodless, it is consistently brutal, not just in what it depicts but in the themes that drive it. TDK is a film for adults, please leave the kids at home. Let’s deal with those “flaws” first, the largest being the character Rachel Dawes . In Batman Begins , I blamed Katie Holmes . Her acting was weak, to say the least, which is regrettable in that who she is and what she says and does are important to the film. Critics agreed and either for that or other reasons, Katie was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaal , who is a better actress. Yet here she’s weak, real weak. Maybe it’s the character, not the actress, which is frustrating because Rachel is a pivotal character. The film,...
1 comment
Read more

John Wick: Chapter 4

No sense in playing coy, this is a great film. I’ve seen it twice and while I don’t quite love it in the way I love the first, original John Wick , it’s my #2. It’s a little overlong, has some wasted space and time, has one absolutely pointless and useless character, and generally ignores the realities of firefights, falling, getting shot, hit, etc. All that notwithstanding, it’s a great action flick, has a genuine emotional core, and is well worth your time if you’re into that sort of thing. Like I am. Summary: John Wick (Keanu Reeves), last seen saying he was fed up with the High Table, goes to war to obtain his freedom. Some of the most incredible action scenes ever filmed ensue, culminating in a very satisfactory finale and a devastating post-credit scene. The first Wick film was a surprise hit. It was a simple, straight-forward tale of vengeance told in a simple, straight-forward manner. Where it stood out was its devotion to human stunt work, on exploiting long camera shots that ...
Post a Comment
Read more

DVD: The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

Awful. The film is an environmentalist wacko wet dream. No one else could like this thing. I’m trying to think of something positive and all I can come up with is how positively awful it is. The original The Day the Earth Stood Still is a science fiction masterpiece. In it, Klaatu comes to Earth with a simple message: Do what you want among yourselves and on your planet. But if you attempt to export your violent way to the stars, Gort and his friends will hit you with so many lefts you’ll beg for a right. (Gort being the cosmic version of Chuck Norris, you see.) The ultimate warning was that we needed to change our violent ways if we expected to be accepted among the stars. In this remake, the aliens are environmental busy-bodies who have bought into the entire notion that we puny little humans are capable of destroying the planet. Therefore, we must be eliminated so that the planet, for God knows what reason, can try again. To count the ways in which this film makes no sense ...
1 comment
Read more