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Chaps - I normally linger on the military thread, but couldn't resist reading this thread because it involves all of us, and it ties in with my line of business. I have a question and a couple of points. Does anyone know what exactly what the "damages" that this guy was awarded are? If it was a couple of million then that is, if invested, an income of some 50K per year. He has also received a public apology and, whilst I acknowledge that many will believe that there is "no smoke without fire", such an apology is enough for him to sue a future potential employer who refuses him employment without concrete grounds (if indeed he wants'needs to work again) and to enable him to show his face in public. The reverse side of the coin is that the "authorities" have shown, publicly, that they are vigilant (they may also have publicly demonstrated their "clumsiness - but that's a subjective call) and sent a clear message to potential terrorists that "we are watching". Whilst I do not want to get into the Human Rights debate - especially in terms of Individual Rights v Individual Responsibilities I would point out that it is a 2-way street. There are jobs out there (Armed Forces springs immediately to mind for some reason!) where some things that people would see as my "Human Rights" have been curtailed because of the requirements of my employment - that's OK, I knew that when I signed up and, to be honest, I could have worked it out for myself without being told. There are simply some activities that are not compatible with some jobs. Finally, the big question - the "What If". Just say that this guy had crashed his aircraft into Canary Wharf and subsequent investigations revealed what we all know know after reading this thread - what would the Human Rights supporters be saying now? So, for what it's worth, my take on this is that in the overall scheme of things everyone involved in this is a loser - the individual, BA, the security services and HMG - OR, just perhaps everyone is a winner. The captain has his cash and a public apology and perhaps dopesn't ever need to work again, the security services have sent their message - etc etc. Just a thought............back off where I belong now!
The captain has his cash and a public apology and perhaps doesn't ever need to work again...
Samir Jamaluddin was a first officer not a captain. The original post is extremely badly written, the person to receive compensation and an apology was Lotfi Raissi NOT Samir Jamaluddin.
The trouble, Gentlemen, is that we are fast approaching a state where even contributing to this thread could be deemed "evidence of terrorist sympathies". A simple check of your IP address follows, then a quiet word to your employer, the cancellation of your passport for "security reasons" and there you are, washed up. Thoughtcrime.
The problem is - who will watch the watchers? Once a security service reaches the stage where peoples careers depend on a continuing caseload of threats to the State, they will be tempted to manufacture them if their supply declines. Since much of their work can, and must, remain secret, it is easy to claim the existence of "secret evidence" of intent when fitting someone up. It takes very bright, hard working and hard nosed Judges and Civil servants to keep the security services in the fetters our forfathers applied to them.
Unfortunately it appears that those fetters are now broken. Security is now an "Industry" that will not retreat. The threat is now "Islam" and if we can't find a few terrorists to keep the public scared, we will poke and prod the Muslims till they react.
So what have we had? A shoe bomber? An underwear bomber? A lot of low IQ idiots in Britian, America and Australia whose efforts at terrorism are almost comical? Has a professional airline pilot ever committed a terrorist act? I don't think so. The only exception in the West is the backpack attack on Londons tube system.
To put that another way; does anyone remember the IRA? The bombing outside Harrods? The hotel in Brighton? The mortar attack on Ten Downing Street? Now THAT was a terrorist organisation! those were a terrorists terrorists! Yet compare our response to IRA terrorism to Islamic terrorism. Did we get our panties in knots and suspend ancient freedoms over the IRA? Did we run around denying jobs to anyone with an Irish name who was a Catholic?
Folks there are at least Two groups who profit from this paranoia; the security industry and various countries who want to demonise Muslims of various varieties for political purposes.
The cause of freedom is not helped by unquestioning believers like are friend Notso Fantastic:
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The nutters are still out there. They come from branches of one religion, and they set fire to their shoes and underpants inflight, have an unholy fascination with death, murder, destruction of non-believers. We've seen they can come from any background at any time, but with one thing in common.
And of course Pinkaroo who tries to overturn the presumption of innocence:
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Just because you have not been told what is known by the Service does not make them wrong.
Sunfish - Freedom, for freedom's sake, is a non runner, real freedom can only be achieved by good security. Right now the security services are up against some very clever and very evil people, the security services have to think on the run and may well require to be innovative and non conforming, it doesn't matter, what ever it takes to keep the peace and save lives as well as preserve your precious freedom has to be acceptable.
The idea that you can have peace and freedom with a security service that is hide bound by a set of published rules and no latitude to operate outside those rules is just a Utopian pipe dream.
I really don't see how "are(sic) friend" Notsofantastic, by stating the bleedin' obvious, can, in any way, be detrimental to the cause of freedom.
To put that another way; does anyone remember the IRA? The bombing outside Harrods? The hotel in Brighton? The mortar attack on Ten Downing Street? Now THAT was a terrorist organisation! those were a terrorists terrorists! Yet compare our response to IRA terrorism to Islamic terrorism. Did we get our panties in knots and suspend ancient freedoms over the IRA? Did we run around denying jobs to anyone with an Irish name who was a Catholic?
Actually, yes -- on both counts. The humorously-named Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1974, rushed through Parliament in all its stages in just two days, conferred upon the Home Secretary the power to declare certain organisations illegal by fiat, those who remained members of them being punishable by prison sentences of up to ten years. The Act also set up a system of internal exile of a kind unique to Europe west of the Iron Curtain, enabling the Home Secretary to issue indefinite "exclusion orders" to persons he didn't like the look of, either confining them to Northern Ireland, or preventing them from going there. The affected person had no right to be informed of the reasons, if any, for the making of these orders, or to challenge them in the courts. Violators got five years' stir. The Act allowed suspects to be detained without charge or trial for up to seven days, without the right to see a solicitor or any obligation on the part of the state even to confirm that the arrest had taken place; some 150,000 people, nearly all Irish, were so detained during its lifetime. A similar piece of legislation adopted at the same time abolished trial by jury for terrorist offences; the two "Real IRA" suspects convicted a few weeks ago were tried in such a non-jury court, with a single judge in the agreeable position not only of determining the guilt or innocence of the accused but also adjudicating on the fairness of his own conduct of the trial. ,All of these powers were not only preserved, but extended, when the PTA was supplanted by the Terrorism Act, 2000, and its many pieces of supplementary legislation. Needless to say, the expedients pioneered in Northern Ireland, and introduced under the rubric of combatting terrorism, have now been extended to Great Britain, where today they are mainstays of regular criminal procedure: the abolition of the right to silence (Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, 1994); detention without trial (Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984); restrictions on movement (Public Order Act, 1986); wiretapping and surveillance for such "offences" as sending one's children to a school outside one's own district (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000); the end of "double jeopardy," allowing the state to use its limitless resources to try suspects for the same crime over and over until it gets the verdict it wants (Criminal Justice Act, 2003); and much else. This is one of the drawbacks of not having a written constitution: civil liberties exist only as long as Parliament is pleased to permit them to exist. The late Lord Hailsham in 1976 famously described the British political system as an "elective dictatorship." He didn't know the half of it.
As for discrimination in employment against people with Irish names or accents: the practice may not have been codified in law, but it was nonetheless widespread in the 1970s and 1980s. Nor was it illegal at the time. It would be if revived today.
Right now the security services are up against some very clever and very evil people, the security services have to think on the run and may well require to be innovative and non conforming, it doesn't matter, what ever it takes to keep the peace and save lives as well as preserve your precious freedom has to be acceptable.
That is the trouble Parabellum; who says that the security services are up against some very clever and very evil people????
Why the security services of course, that is the nub of the problem. They have a vested interest in its continuation.
From my almost totally uninformed perspective:
1) A Lot of Muslim angst would disappear if we stopped dropping bombs and firing missiles at civilians in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
2) More Angst would vanish if we pursued a more even handed policy in the Middle East in regard to the Israel/Palestine issue.
Bear in mind that these jihadis believe their cause is just and they are true patriots. I'll believe "evil" when I see a credible terrorist attack aimed at "world Domination".
To put that another way, I think most of our problems are of our own making.
I've travelled in the largest Muslim country - Indonesia - 200 million people for Thirty years and apart from a bit of sectarian barstardry in Bali and Sulawesi, I've seen nothing but happy people, liberated women and good beer.
who says that the security services are up against some very clever and very evil people????
Do I really have to explain that Sunfish? The remainder of your post suggests that you are escaping reality. I agree that Bintang Baru is excellent beer and the majority of Indonesians are peace loving but that still leaves sufficient evil people to nurture and spread terrorism, which they do.
I won't comment on the Israeli/Palestinian issue, we wouldn't agree, anymore than we would agree on why bombs are dropped on Afghanistan and parts of Pakistan.
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That is the trouble Parabellum; who says that the security services are up against some very clever and very evil people????
The nutters are still out there. They come from branches of one religion,
Not quite, lest I'm mistaken about religious affiliation of Timothy McVeigh an Anders Breivik.
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Originally Posted by Canadian Break
Does anyone know what exactly what the "damages" that this guy was awarded are?
None, so far. Trial is underway.
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Originally Posted by Ancient observer
continue hanging around with undesireables, and we'll take an interest in you.
Good advice, however, practical application in the actual case might be somewhat difficult as "undesirables" have been cleared by the court and one of them was, depending on version, either brother or brother in law of our fired colleague. We would all cut ties with our kin, if ordered so by security, would we?
Guilty by association is only applicable to those of a certain religion and skin tone.
Well that rule certainly seems to be working for Stuart Pearce in the media today, assuming you think he's got the same religion and skin tone as the BA pilot...
Might also be worth noting that where association involves having the same parents, the same skin tone and religion are going to be highly correlated.
Wonder which route the investigators go for first - lets look at all <skin-tone> <religion> in this area, or lets look at these guys' relatives & business associates....
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Originally Posted by cwatters
Did the pilot concerned in this case "associate" with other pilots at the airline? Anything happen to them?
By "associate" do you mean have the same parents ? And having passed large sums of money between them suspiciously enough to be charged with money laundering?
If there were other BA pilots associated in that way, I would be genuinely suprised if they were still flying now.
2. 99% of Muslims want nothing more than a peaceful existence and have no animus towards the West. They even drown by the boatload trying to reach us because they admire our way of life.
3. 99% of commentators are biased and hype the threat for their own reasons,
like this - the wife of a former American Undersecretary of Defence:
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the slaughtering, death-worshiping, innocent-butchering, child-sacrificing savages who dip their hands in blood and use women—those who aren’t strapping bombs to their own devils’ spawn and sending them out to meet their seventy-two virgins by taking the lives of the school-bus-riding, heart-drawing, Transformer-doodling, homework-losing children of Others—and their offspring—those who haven’t already been pimped out by their mothers to the murder god—as shields, hiding behind their burkas and cradles like the unmanned animals they are, and throw them not into your prisons, where they can bide until they’re traded by the thousands for another child of Israel, but into the sea, to float there, food for sharks, stargazers, and whatever other oceanic carnivores God has put there for the purpose.
Controversial training material about Islam provided to a small pool of FBI agents at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. were inappropriate and offensive, FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress today.
The briefing documents, first revealed by Wired’s Danger Room blog, emphasized that mainstream Muslims are violent, and included a graphic that shows that Muslims who are, “Pious and Devout” have tended to be more violent historically than Christians or Jews. The briefing slides noted, “Jihad is motivated by the strategic themes and drivers in Islam,” while another described the prophet Mohammad as a “Cult Leader.”
There are numerous examples of such terror hype going back to the start of the Iraq war and before.
Lest you think I don't believe there is a terror threat, I do believe there is a terror threat, but if all we listen to is cant and hype, we are going to be focussing our resources on the wrong people and the wrong threat.
Just remember that the majority of the 911 hijackers were Wahabists from Saudi Arabia - mates of the guy David Cameron is now sucking up to:
You are subject to a wide ranging campaign aimed at demonising Islam for policy purposes by a variety of actors for their own reasons. What that does is:
(a) Result in abominations like the treatment of the Pilot in question.
(b) Lines the pockets of the "security" industry, to the consternation of passengers and Pilots alike.
(b) Prevents us from clearly analysing and dealing with the real threats.
I am reminded of the proud mother who stood by the side of the rode to watch her soldier son march by and was heard to remark, "Ooh look! There goes my Sunfish and he is the only one in step".
You can have the last word Sunfish, I'm finished, this is Hamster Wheel stuff now.
A bomb hidden in the underwear of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, now 25, caused a fire but failed to explode on a Delta Airlines flight from Amsterdam carrying 289 people on December 25.
"The jihadi is proud to kill in the name of God and that is exactly what God told us to do in the Koran," said Abdulmutallab, who had pleaded guilty in October.
In closing I will just say that regardless of how the media and government try to shape the public perception of this case, I am convinced that Umar was given an intentionally defective bomb by a U.S. Government agent and placed on our flight without showing a passport or going through security, to stage a false terrorist attack to be used to implement various government policies.
