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Jul. 21st, 2004 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonThis article in Salon today made me very sad.
Fourteen dark-skinned men from Syria board Northwest's flight 327 [from Detroit to LA], seated in two separate groups. Some are carrying oddly shaped bags and wearing track suits with Arabic script across the back. During the flight the men socialize, gesture to one another, move about the cabin with pieces of their luggage, and, most ominous of all, repeatedly make trips to the bathroom. The author links the men's apparently irritable bladders to a report published in the Observer (U.K.) warning of terrorist plots to smuggle bomb components onto airplanes one piece at a time, to be secretly assembled in lavatories.
"What I experienced during that flight," breathes Jacobsen, "has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats."
The Syrians were, of course, a band of musicians. The kind of people fundamentalist Islamicists despise.
Jacobsen's kicker: "So the question is ... Do I think these men were musicians? I'll let you decide. But I wonder, if 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?"
The paranoia boggles the mind. Detroit is home to the largest Arabic population in the US (maybe second to NYC? anyway, a sizeable population) and as Patrick Smith points out in the article, it's not at all unreasonable to expect to see several Arabic men on any given flight in or out of Detroit. Although I suppose the entire city could just be a giant sleeper cell pretending to be musicians, engineers, plumbers, storekeepers, etc.
I didn't read the original article by Annie Jacobsen at Wall Street Women because I don't want to give them the hit stat. Also I would probably start screaming.
Fourteen dark-skinned men from Syria board Northwest's flight 327 [from Detroit to LA], seated in two separate groups. Some are carrying oddly shaped bags and wearing track suits with Arabic script across the back. During the flight the men socialize, gesture to one another, move about the cabin with pieces of their luggage, and, most ominous of all, repeatedly make trips to the bathroom. The author links the men's apparently irritable bladders to a report published in the Observer (U.K.) warning of terrorist plots to smuggle bomb components onto airplanes one piece at a time, to be secretly assembled in lavatories.
"What I experienced during that flight," breathes Jacobsen, "has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats."
The Syrians were, of course, a band of musicians. The kind of people fundamentalist Islamicists despise.
Jacobsen's kicker: "So the question is ... Do I think these men were musicians? I'll let you decide. But I wonder, if 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?"
The paranoia boggles the mind. Detroit is home to the largest Arabic population in the US (maybe second to NYC? anyway, a sizeable population) and as Patrick Smith points out in the article, it's not at all unreasonable to expect to see several Arabic men on any given flight in or out of Detroit. Although I suppose the entire city could just be a giant sleeper cell pretending to be musicians, engineers, plumbers, storekeepers, etc.
I didn't read the original article by Annie Jacobsen at Wall Street Women because I don't want to give them the hit stat. Also I would probably start screaming.
