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He's wrong, and he's a fool. Profiling doesn't work because it's so easy to avoid fitting the profile. There may be a particular look that radical young Muslims adopt in everyday life, but any radical young Muslim planning a bombing can shave his beard, dress in a smart suit, have a drink in the airport bar.

When he hits the gate he looks like a respectable buisinessman, office worker, travelling sales guy - anything but a suicide bomber.

Profiling targets people who aren't bothering to hide, in other words; the innocent.

Two issues spring to mind. The first is over-sensitivity. When people search you, they are not suggesting you ARE a terrorist, they are searching to make sure that you're NOT a terrorist because THEY don't know. You don't get upset when they ask you to show your boarding pass, and to take offence ("HOW DARE YOU! DO I LOOK LIKE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO WOULD BOARD WITHOUT A TICKET?") would be ridiculous. The same applies to being stopped and questioned or searched if everyone is being stopped and searched.
Profiling simply narrows the search and raises the sensitivity a few notches in inverse proportion. If most present terrorists are found to be green people and you are a green person, you can hardly be surprised if stopped and questioned. It is merely common sense.
If it upsets you, then you should address your grievance to the green people who have brought this upon you. You might ponder the possibility that they terrorised and made a point about their own green-ness on purpose, knowing that you would be upset when you reaped what they had sown.
If I am walking through the woods and I suddenly come across a tiger, I will pull out my gun as a precaution. If I subsequently find that it is someone's pet tiger and it is harmless, the tiger can hardly be offended because the danger was inside MY head because of OTHER tigers, not in THIS tiger (and yes, we can argue the train shooting tragedy later).
The media are a bit naughty in choosing to call the resulting reaction "a backlash" as though it was some kind of punishment deserving retribution. The action of profiling is common sense, not punishment.
Walking home late at night from work, carrying a hammer, I was stopped and questioned by a passing police patrol. Far from being upset, I was relieved to see them keeping an eye on things. It did make me think that the police are carpenterphobes.

Hi, Ewan (1)
Fool is a bit strong. Profiling forces the plotter to do something extra in his planning and execution, gradually narrowing his available options and handing them to the protectors. Are you sure someone isn't watching the bar for olive-skinned, well-shaven, nicely suited businessmen ostentatiously taking an alcoholic drink when one would expect them to be taking a soft drink?

That's it, I no longer care about Big Brother knowing the intimate details of my life. I've acclimatised to the omniscient digital God, I'm fully habituated. You can blame reality TV (or you could if I watched it!), CCTV, whatever, just biochip me, please. No need for profiling, just auto scan my retina, my RFID biochip, even the electromagnetic ravings of my mind if you want, as long as I can avoid long queues and having to put my laptop bag in the hold! Selective profiling's not needed, we can just profile everyone in seconds! And to all the airport security staff out there, I promise I won't leave my Mac running Virtual PC next time, as I didn't realise how much confusion this can cause!

Passenger profiling implies something called Data Mining, one needs data if one is to profile. This is what the police investigating the current plot is now doing, extending it's raids to more locations, including internet cafe's, in search for leads to "dozens of possible plots" (the original 3x3=9 possibly 10 is fading out). This is then a good opportunity, both, for media and the public, to examine more closely the methodology and techniques being discussed now as they are being applied on the ground as we speak.

On data mining, I offer this Wired magazine article for a consideration, and I sincerely hope it will receive some:

Checklist profiling per se is not terribly good (as mentioned before it is very easy to avoid) However behavioural profiling as discussed by John Nash is far harder. El Al are successful not because they are looking for terrorists but because they are looking for nervous travellers behaving out of the ordinary.

Also every traveller should be subjected to the same monitoring i.e. there is no fast track for 1st class or crew. This way even engineering insiders will be spotted because their behaviour will be different form other crew for example.

Unfortunately technology can not help here. Seasoned human inspectors will spot someone out of the ordinary with far lower false positives than any profiling system. This of course takes time / resources and a lot less attractive than the next automatic technological marvel.

When I was a boythere was talk of reading bumps on ones head to find wrong doers. I do find it funny that having ID cards will make it all better.

A look at some 'real life' tv shows how any unknown can fool supposedly knowledgeable people.

The only people that are gullable are the ones that pay wages to those whether sucessful or not! The local police wouldn't get away with failing to control local matters. Why should we pay for corporate blunder after blunder

A new technological widget for profiling passengers, as reported today in the Wall Street Journal online...

Which Travelers Have 'Hostile Intent'?
Biometric Device May Have the Answer
By JONATHAN KARP and LAURA MECKLER
August 14, 2006

Do they ask what your religion is ? how strong your faith is ? are you a recent convert ? Or I wonder will they start ?

John @ 3 - I'd agree that calling him a fool is strong, but not too strong. This is an important thing to get right and he is getting it wholly wrong. As you allude to and Richard @ 6 has made more explicit, good security relies on looking for things that are 'wrong' or 'off' or 'odd' in some respect, wherever you find them.

Profiling concentrates attention on those that fit the profile, which is simply another way of saying that it takes attention away from those that don't fit the profile. This is like have a building with an armour plated, retina scanning, CCTV covered front door, and leaving the back door open. If you make an easier route through your security then that is the way an attacker will go.

On the specifics of profilling to detect Islamic terrorists it's important to note that not all Muslims are arab or arab looking. Indeed it appears that some of those held over the recent alleged plot are white British converts, as was Richard Reid, and one of the 7th July bombers was black Carribean. You simply can't profile for 'Muslim' the way you can for 'green person'.

Profiling os one of a range of 'security theatre' techniques that don't actually make us safer, they just make us feel safer by making it appear that something is being done. Good security is often invisible, like the intelligence work that resulted in the recent arrests.

Why does the Government not compile and publish a list of all those persons who have been charged or convicted with hijacking or suicide hijackings over the past 10 years and produce and publish a common profile standard. If that common profile standard turns out to be male, white, christian, single and aged between 18 - 30 years then surely that is the group that should be targeted for passenger profiling. If it turn out to be another common profile then that should be the group considered for passenger profiling.Alternatively the airlines could invite individuals to prequalification for flying with them. This could be a face to face interview between passenger and airline and result in a "certificated passenger" to qualify for all flights with that airline, renewable at appropriate times. In time airlines could have flights full of "certificated passengers" and this "Get to know who is flying with you" could be a business winner for the airlines in terms of loyalty etc.

if i were a moderate, peace-loving muslim - as most British-born Muslims claim to be - i would be quite happy to be searched repeatedly if this meant that my more radical and violent brethren would be thwarted in their attempts to murder innocent people. Amongst them, no doubt, many moderate, peace - loving Muslims.
Actually, I'm a secular, but nonetheless peace-loving Jew. i am regularly searched randomly when travelling, and don't mind a bit. If it makes flying safer then go right ahead - search your socks off.

profiling is an absolute waste of time, converts are always much more fanatical about their adopted religion than those born into it.
therefore its young white english people we should be targetting on the basis that they maybe a newly converted muslim.

How ever clever, a Muslim terrorist could not disguise himself as me (white, blue eyes, light-brown hair, slightly overwieght, slightly over middle-aged) travelling with my wife and four children (aged 21(disabled), 19, 14, 11 and 3). So why were we and our car micro- searched when travelling on the Euro tunnel?

Well, the answer is we were the tenth car and they search every tenth car.

What a stupid waste of time - how will this deter anyone? Send three cars in a row through and at least two will succeed with this method.

As a kid I was always being stopped and searched for drugs as I sported long hair. I accepted it, thus, sadly, Young Muslims should shoulder profiling with good nature. Closing Heathrow is a victory for the terrorists - think of the millions that cost.

I am hugging myself with delight at the thought that your politically correct multicultural immigration chickens are coming home to roost in a big way.

Since 1970 both Tories and Labour have presided over a major influx of Asian Muslims who now constitute a massively cancerous social tumour in the middle of what increasingly looks like "occupied Britanistan" - the "ship of fools" as it is known here.

Now you can suck up to the Muslim Council or Liberty's Chakrabati or the Sheridans and Galloways of this world as much as you like but you will not be able to prevent their Islamofascist suicide bomb attacks on you no matter how biased your media are towards the PC Liberal Consensus who seem to have taken over most of the media - including the ±«Óãtv. You reluctantly accord minimum exposure to Melanie Phillips or Michael Gove or Christopher Hitchens - that is between your craven cow-towing to people who have the infernal cheek to demand to influence your foreign policy by means terrorist attacks of the type of mediaeval barbarism we last saw in the Kamikaze attacks on the US Navy in 1945. What's wrong with you all ?

I have been involved in aviation all my working life and have a thorough knowledge of Muslim countries and the beliefs. 30 years ago we where warning that the Islamic faith was being used as a means to oppress and control the peoples of a nation by those who had gained power, or had power. It was evident that this was a future problem. unfortunately politicians of the day where consummed with Russia and China. I think if you had mentioned to a member of the present day government 15 yrs ago that somebody was Islamic they would most probably think that they suffered an eating disorder. What worries me most at present is that events are being controlled by a group of powerbrokers who have a history of incompetence and lying in everything that they have set out to achieve, I am very distrustful of what I am being told. yes Islam is a problem, and will be in the future even more so, it will grow. I don't think their is anyone in the present cabinet who has the common nous to deal with the problem "spin yes but not the peril ". to finish I was involved in profiling for an American airline in the UK it works.

Jon (33) Yes, we'll aim to put Tim Whewell's High Wycombe piece back up shortly.

John Nash (33) It's a very good point, but surely it is possible to raise and reflect subjective points of view within objective reporting? What influences our choice of questions to raise then becomes the issue, and in that again we have to try to be balanced.

To Henry Wood (4 on Editor's Column) I have to admit an error. On Friday our team in Lebanon, who were doing a piece looking back at the 30 days of the conflict, incorrectly used the originally reported death toll at Qana(56) rather than the much lower revised figure (28). I apologise for this unfortunate mistake.

Peter

The authorities can't expect Muslims and ethnic minorities to keep trusting them to do this sort of thing after so many lies and or mistakes. De Menezes was shot because of his appearance, and we get inquiry upon inquiry into police racism.

The whole idea of profiling is just ill thought out anyway. It may come as news to people like Stevens but Arabs do often have white friends. All they have to do is find someone who trusts them and doesn't fit "the profile", then a bit of

'oh you know I'm not a terrorist, just take my hand luggage on for me so I don't have to be searched / so I don't have to pay excise duty / so they don't find that bit of marijuana I got stashed in there'

or any other convincing excuse and then when he gets on and retrieves his stuff: BANG.

There's no advantage to security in screening fewer people. This is just so middle class white guys don't have to queue up for so long. If, as has been said above, innocent Muslims should just grin and bear it then why shouldn't the rest of us? There's a worrying trend here: to say that Muslims have a responsibility to root out extremists is one thing - they're in the best position to do so - but to say that moderate Muslims bear the responsibility of terrorists' actions with comments like 'if they don't like it, they should sort the terrorists out' - as if they could wave a wand and the problem would be solved - is mild racism. It's no more an innocent Muslim's fault as an innocent Christian's, and you can't say it's their problem if you're the one that gets killed.

That NOTW piece is the kind of childish cryptofascism I'd expect from a Washington neocon - he can't even resist the temptation to ask for an extension of the limit for detention without charge (with no justification whatsoever). Notice how he talks about Protestant, Catholic and Muslim communities, as if Christianity has denominations but Islam is just one big whining family. Ignorant rubbish!

I visited Washington DC lastSeptember with my son. At Immigration the officer took my son's fingerprint and photograph, but said he didn't need mine. When I queried this, with some embarrassment he explained it was because of my age. I am an 80 year old woman. So little old ladies can't be terrorists by definition!

Hi, Peter (17)
First, may I say that it this online communication a bizarre experience - I am veteran Mr Angry, writing letters to Editors, not in the hope of publication per se but in the hope that the mail stats might pull stuff more to my taste. Other letters, unprintable, get written just to give you lot a smile.
I fully accept that subjective reports highlight important facets of objective reporting, but I have a flying fit when reports go straight to the subjective and overlook the objective context. You have my sympathy - I only have me to satisfy.
This also fits with the subject of this thread. In (3), I mentioned "olive-skinned" and have rightly been reminded by others that I am a bit subjective (!), but I was making a point in reply to post (1) - I am sure the profiling is a bit more sophisticated and objective than my example. The real point was that profiling works like a cattle crush, gently pressuring a terrorist to try elsewhere, a point that Ewan (10) actually reinforces, or recruit outside his safe, close group. That profiling reassures the public is an added bonus.

The fact that all the terrorists actual or suspects have been found, originating from a particular Religious Faith, one can easily conclude about any danger coming only from people bearing that faith.
As such world will be sfer if people of that faith only are either banned from air travel or severly searched at every point of travelling and are required to get special permit before travel. This will reduce the cost of security to a great extent and that savings should be spent in Muslim countries for better education and removal of extremism and fascisim.

For God's Sake, WHY are we going round and round in circles, creating chaos, inconvenience and expense for the General Public, when the CAUSE and the SOLUTION to our current airport security crisis is STARING US IN THE FACE ?

SACK Tony Blair, DETACH Britain from America's EVIL Foreign Policy, and Start Treating the Rest of The World with RESPECT, and the Terrorist Treat will DISAPPEAR, all by itself !

Passenger profiling of Asian/Arab Muslim is very risky that it will encourage terrorists to recruit those not being profiled. For example Black African, South East Asian or even whites. How can forget Jihad Jack or the American Taliban (Walker Lindh), both whites and both converts. The key lies in tight airport security for all passengers and good intellegence.

I am sorry but as a disabled person in a wheelchair with a colonial passport, I now expect to be carefully checked at airports. Can you imagine how devastating it would be if someone used my wheelchair as a means of getting a bomb onto an aircraft. I cannot see what is going on behind me and my carer has to leave me in waiting areas quite often. To say that there is an instant easy solution to any terrorist threat is simply rubbish.
We can only hope and pray for time and education to heal rifts and misinformation, in the mean time we must accept what authorities do in our best interests, however misguided.

Something Emily mentioned in her newsletter about tonight's Newsnight reminded me of what my dad went through during the late 1980s post Satanic Verses and post September 11th.

My dad (who passed away a year ago) was a Sikh who had a beard and wore a turban, as Emily notes a very visible symbol of his (non-Muslim) faith, was constantly jeered and insulted by name calling and being referred to as Osama bin Ladin.

In a country that purports to be multicultural it's hard to understand why because you're Asian and wear a turban you are automatically given an Islamic identity not just by the authorities (as in the case of Emily's friend) but also by a large number of the British public.

I am proud of my Sikh heritage and I think people should recognise that the Sikh and the Muslim faiths are different.

"If I am walking through the woods and I suddenly come across a tiger, I will pull out my gun as a precaution. If I subsequently find that it is someone's pet tiger and it is harmless, the tiger can hardly be offended because the danger was inside MY head because of OTHER tigers, not in THIS tiger."

Isn't this rather simplistic? Surely the Tiger could argue (if it were able) that men have killed many more Tigers than Tigers men. Thus it shows its teeth as a precaution. If it goes on to attack, even when the human has not been proven to be a threat, this is collateral damage arising from defensive action based on sound intelligence. Sound familiar? Your argument assumes that your side is simply acting in self defence and the other side is either the aggressor or simply harmless. This is not a perspective that can adequately reflect the truths we are facing. Frankly your argument is a bit Star Wars.

Muslim communities need to speak out against the terror attacks. Profiling is good and is needed.
British terrorists and possible terrorists should be tried for treason and hanged!

We should learn from History...

Shortly before election day, on the evening of February 27, 1933 in Berlin, the Reichstag building (the Imperial Parliament) went up in flames. Adolf Hitler rushed to the scene. At first glance, Hitler described the fire as a beacon from heaven.

"You are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch in German history. This fire is the beginning," Hitler told a news reporter at the scene.

If you know your history, Hitler instigated this. Im sure history is repeating itself and it disgusts me that the media are entertaining such proposterous claims. The fire was started by Bush, and he has successfully managed to hoodwink into believing there is an actual war going on.

Of course profiling is the way to go initially until we can arrest a significant amount of bombers. Luckily the Americans are not as pc as we have to be over here in Britain and call a spade a spade! Im tired of muslims telling the British Govt how to deal with this threat ( as if they know anyway! ) Religion is the root of all evil in this world today.

Profiling will be ineffective and smacks of racism.

Ann Hamilton: wrote @ 10:01 today; check it out please.

Ann may well be in a wheel chair but she is very much awake. How can profiling work.

These people will recruit whom ever they want to fit the profile that they think we are not looking for.

THAT’S WHY WE KEEP GETTING HIT.

Maybe Richard of Richard and Judy should be come the nest PM, at least he has the Ear of the people and is asking the correct questions and has more Guts than the PC overcorrect situation in this new so called era of diplomacy and tolerance.

What are we to do with the people that have forgotten what the real meaning of National security means?

Try this shorted version.

Defense of the realm, not only defines the defense of the Realm as being these shores, as we see them, but the safety of the public there in.

So Ann I make you right, my dear good on you for only having your body in the wheel chair and not your mind.

Perhaps we could if it were possible put the PC fools minds in your wheel chair.

I bet this will be bloged out.

Never mind the beeb are to PC?

Many Thanks, please keep us all safe.

Allan.

If that senior policeman is what we can expect if Muslims rise in the ranks then heaven help this country. It is clear his duty is to his ethnic background and his faith, he cares more for political correctness than sense and appears oblivious to reason. The man is a disgrace to his uniform and a real threat to any advancement of harmony within this country. Can we please have some logic - terror is coming from the Muslim community, local and internationally - if that is the case then they should be subject to scrutiny and leave middle aged Methodist women to their knitting.

I completely agree with profiling, its unfortunate but this current state of violence needs to be stopped.

Its not random violence its aimed at a subset of the worlds population but a specific enemy.

We need to set harsh laws that protect this country and leave everyone with the option of leaving if its not to their taste, I like this country and if it taked harsher laws to make it better so be it.

Anyone who insights any form of religious or political hatred should be arrested or deported whatever race.

We need to protect our way of life, which has grown over many generations, its as important to us as any countries.

I have just watched Emily chairing the debate on tonight's Newsnight. There are of course points on both sides. But as was mentioned, not all the recent 'bomb plot' suspects were Asian, so we must be careful of stereotyping. Of course, we do need to use every available weapon at our disposal - after all if a British flight went down, there would very likely be muslim people on board.

We must be very careful of how any profiling would be instigated. It is potentially a very slippery slope.

If you are interested, look at the BNP website which is advocating banning ALL muslims from air travel using the specious argument that 'whites have been barred from travelling' [football hooligans].

passenger [race] profiling is moronic

it is a false security measure, and more likely to widen the gulf that politicians claim to want to close

and just when everyone's feeling safe, some very disillusioned white male will blow himself up, just to prove the stupidity of the policy

That woman typifies the American naive knee-jerk reaction.
Any would be bomber has only to dress as a normal looking British citizen to escape detection.
Let her fellow countrymen panic as the usually do and leave us to get on with what we do best. Finding the sensible logical way to deal with this.
Never forget that we face more danger crossing the road than we do of being on an aeroplane that it destroyed by a bomber.

Passenger profiling has been practised by the UK police for years in its attempts to detain IRA terrorists; as Northern Irish citizens we were limited to sterilization zones in airports and were marched in single file past waiting detectives; it was often very intimidating, one felt a bit like a second class citizen in one's own country and would get fed up at being interrogated on one's job, purpose of visit etc but despite all this there was an understanding that it was people like myself (age, appearance, sex, origin) who posed a threat to lives. So despite the inconvenience and unpleasant feelings it generated, I always understood why it was happening and wholeheartedly supported it. A Chief Superintendant from the UK police arguing against profiing is a very worrying development. The UK is so concerned these days with political correctness, one is almost afraid to state the obvious.

Of course passenger profiling is logical, if 95% of "known" terrorists, or terror suspects are young black muslims, then surely 95% of such people intending to board a plane should expect extra searches, until such time as the profile alters.

I am amazed at the blatant stupidity and naivety of Heather Macdonald from the Manhattan Institute.

If Britain introduced profiling, we would surely get it wrong and cause more damage to our sizzling race relations than we already have.

We simply cannot have a system of punishing Asians/Arabs who choose to travel by picking them out for inspection and humiliation.

What on earth has America got to teach us on these matters?

I'm hindu and we are all at risk, i believe the great in great britain is being eroded by excessive Political Correctness; i salute France.
I accept that i will be stopped and searched at the airport and I have received "looks" from security and others in the past few day, but you know what, so be it!
We cannot be divided over islamic terrorism, or any other terroist organisation, trying to hold a country to ransom, otherwise be prepared to abide by Sariah law, within 50 years, our democratic system is not perfect and easily criticised, but I do not want to live by Sariah law.

Passenger Profiling
the View from the Manhattan Institute.
Clearly the system of profiling as a means of identifying potential offenders is alive and well in the United States. The carceral approach adopted in the United States, as a means of controlling particular minority elements of its own population, is well known and understood. whether admitted to as to the aim, which is control of that minority element is another matter. Desai is perfectly correct in saying that what was being proposed was a crime of travelling while being Asian; the statements emanating from the ±«Óãtv Office appear to support this idea. That this situation will 'result in diminished civil liberties' is a clear statement of intent to control particular minority elements, young Asian males. And to what end? Will it bring an end to a threat we are told exists; the young men in Forest Gate may have a view on this. If they were not alienated before, then I wonder what their view is, now.
Anyway, flight reductions will be good for the environment!
Ian Sandison

i am only 16 and even i can understand that people are complicated and passenger profiling over simplifies this terribly complicated issue. especially the idea that terrorists can make members of the public carry out these attacks unknowingly means that everybody needs to be targeted and checked over i think a couple hours more wait would be better than someone being missed and thousands of people being killed

I dont think profiling is a good idea as a muslim i condemn all terroist by profiling it will cause bitterness in muslim community.
the other thing i wanted to mention is that it is ok for a british jew to go back to israel and fight against lebonan but muslims who went to afghanistan to fight have been pinpointed how is this justified could someone explain that to me?????????

I am extremely concerned at the argument taken by the chief superintendent that you interviewed on your program earlier this evening. My biggest concern is that as a senior metropolitan police officer, his main priority should be protecting the public at large. His comments seemed exlusively biased towards the muslim community. His job is not to come on Newsnight and present his own personal views dressed in full uniform. I see this as an abuse of his rank and position because he is promoting his own personal agenda. This should be of grave concern to all British citizens who look to the police to protect us from all significant threats.

This is also proving that there is now an endemic problem with political correctness in our society.

Just one more post, I just read a post regarding treason and unfortunately I agree, it must be the countries vurrent state of affairs.

Harsh laws are the best way, I do not agree with people continuously hating the county they reside in, if you don't like it leave, do not harm others.

I am vary unhappy about a fair bit of the current political structure but I have a choice, I can move, I will not force people with my views or turn to violence.

We all have our own minds.

I don't believe in religion as its been the downfall of civilisation for too long.

You should have picked up your interviewee about her statistics - 95-7% of terrorists etc. Where did this figure come from? There has been one successful bomb attack in London in the 21st Century. It was carried out by four people. One of them was West Indian. I make that 25% of terrorists are from the West Indies. Lies, damned lies etc.

NO HANDLUGGUAGE = NO RACIST OVERREACTIONS
I am happy not to take anything on the flight with me, is that not an option? Even a 20 hour flight would only possibly need some tampons or prescription drugs.
Passenger profiling seems to me to be a "how to not be searched" guide for terrorists, and a further way of alienating innocent muslims.

I just wanted to air my disgust at watching that vacuous racist who appeared on Newsnight tonight talking about passenger profiling. I find it terrifying that anyone could say (without so much as flinching a botoxed brow) that muslims should be honed in on without apology, and imply that whites and 'freckly Irish lasses' be considered benign.

It was almost a relief when she went on to suggest that the whole muslim community should be constantly apologising for the actions of a handful of fanatics - it confirmed the absurdity of her unblinkered, tyrannical views. God help us.

You are right - profiling is the only way forward to allow the majority to lead a "normal" life. If this means that all Muslims are checked, so be it - the problem is theirs. It is about time we forgot about PC and took care of our own

I really cannot believe this is for real! A Muslim can be any skin colour, white, black, brown or even a Malay...one of the latest was a British white - Anglo-Saxon who had converted to Islam....how can you stop only brown skin coloured people - half the world is brown, just look at the mistake made with the shooting of the poor South American man, he was not even of Muslim descent.... This is about a being defined by one's religion not skin colour...

The black community it this country has always been harassed by the police, and now another community with be singled out...to the determent os society as a whole. I am Italian, but people mistake me for a Muslim....this is already happening, please do not sanction it!

the police couldnt tell the difference between an "Asian muslim terrorist" and the brazilian Jean Charles Demendes, so how can we trust profiling

I was born and have grown up in England. I've been Muslim for about 7 years.
Can you please tell me whether I'm welcome in this country or not with my new faith.

I would appreciate the answer soon so I can plan for me and my children to move to a more tolerant country when I graduate next June.

(Those who I consider would tolerate me more than my current home of 'freedom and democracy':

- Iraq

- Afghanistan

- Iran

- Syria

- Lebanon

- Saudi Arabia

NOT:

- Israel (occupied Palestine)

- USA

- Majority of Europe)

With thanks,

Adam Kelwick, Liverpool

Yes of course passenger profiling should be allowed, and if in deference to political correctness, it isn't used, we will pay for it in planes exploding and hundreds of our fellow citizens killed and mutilated.
Little old ladies, assuming they are still willing to fly at all, do not seek to blow up planes, nor for that matter do many groups in society, including, for instance, the IRA. The threat comes from MUSLIMS - and therefore it should be Muslims who are targeted. Not because there is anything wrong with being a Muslim but because therein lies the threat. I think it is shocking that the so-called 'moderate Muslim majority' instead of wholeheartedly helping to root out this enemy within, is instead finding excuses and seeking to put the blame on others.

Profiling is a useful idea, even if it just causes the terrorists to have to take further steps to avoid being caught. Look, if I am mugged and describe my attacker as 'white, with red hair and a big belly', the police would be foolish and wasteful if they stopped skinny black people, wouldn't they? I'm afraid Muslims are rather too keen on taking offence (or pretending to) and playing the victim. The simple fact is that at the moment, most terrorists ARE Muslim and of Muslim appearance, and we should use this fact to protect our citizens.

Hi every one.
Profiling...might work but put yourself in my position. I am a heart surgeon and travel a lot to save people's life. Every time I travel I get thoroughly searched. It is very annoying and time consuming, I in fact consider not travelling internatioanally at all next year.
Where is our society under way? Stop intimidate people just because they look similar to a certain terrorist stereotype. Although when I think about it, the profiling has been in place for people like me for a long long time. So lets just stop fooling ourselves, will we?
Cheers.

I am fed up with Muslims threatening us if we do something they don't like. We are being continually told that we need their cooperation in the War on Terror.

I don't believe that they cooperate with our police at all. You only need to listen to them to know that they despise us - probably for our softness. So bring on the profiling I don't want my holidays to be ruined any more than they have the last couple of years.

I think that the American 'expert' demonstrates the place we in Britain do not want to go but middle America seems happy with. She seemed to think it was acceptable to 'profile' someone by the colour of their skin and their assumed faith. If we were to undertake this policy of profiling by skin colour we would not only be offending and stigmatising the, mostly law abiding, peaceful muslim citizens but most likely Hindus and Christians alike. I don't know about you but I often cannot tell if a person's heritage originates from Northern India or Pakistan without holding a conversation on the subject with them. I don't think you can tell I have a Roman Catholic heritage just by looking at me.

It seems to me that America has grown tired of blaming 'the black man' for their internal problems and has now chosen to blame the 'Muslim or brown man' for their international problems. Maybe if they dealt with the radical extremeists (Christian) in their own population they would get on better with other faiths and the world would be a better place.

Am I alone as a Brit' born during the second world war in being absolutely sick to the back teeth when in my own country, all I hear is the word Muslim every time I turn on the TV, open a newspaper, at any time of the day or night? As for the arguments on tonight's Newsnight, Chief Inspector Ali Dezai talks a load of tosh. When Germany declared war on Britain, we interred Germans, in order to safeguard the country. If the Chief Inspector dislikes the current treatment of his bretheren, some of whom murder multi-faith citizens of this country, then he should be lecturing them, and not us.
Maybe we should search a few Methodists !! They don't drink alcohol either do they?

I'm a big guy. I don't look soft. My head is shaved. I'm a football fan but I an not a soccer hooligan in any way.

If I was to go abroad to watch an England game I would expect to get far more attention from the police than a young asian girl or old pensioner and fully accept it in the war against soccer hooligans.

The police already use profiling to catch soccer hooligans so why is it that it becomes a race issue when the police profile the group which while not 100% the potential source of terrorism do form the majority of likely terrorists?

Bush lowered the terror threat level to yellow right before the terrorists were seized in the UK. Go ahead guys, make a big boom.

On 9/11 al Qaeda was sitting on the white couch with Dubya.

the hole in the pentagon was not the size of an airliner. no traces of the airliner were left on the crash scene

Nothing was left at the sites of plane crashes except for the terrorists' ID's, made of a well known fireproof material: paper.

People on one of the abducted flights called home using their cell phones, funny how good cell phones should sound on an airliner flying at 500mph

One called HIS MOTHER saying: Hi mom, this is John SMITH speaking (I forget the actual name). Terrorists have taken over the plane: you believe me mom, don't you, you believe me right mom?

Dubya's brother had said several months earlier that major changes are hard to accomplish absent a catastrophic event

repeated explosions were heard at low levels of the twin towers before they collapsed. Explosions took place during their collapse many levels downstairs from the collapsing structure, as though they had been set off purposefully

No trace was left of flight 93: it disintegrated. Very few people showed up at the site of the crash and they walked around aimlessly for a while before leaving the scene.

Now that amadinejad is getting ready to trade oil in Euros rather than dollars, the dollar could plummet. Dubya's just waiting for the right time to act. a series of deadly bombings with 4000 corpses in the depths of the atlantic ocean would be just right.

The representative of the Black and Asian Police Officers Association expresses concern that passenger profiling would alienate a part of our population i.e. the Muslim/Asian community. Does he not need to consider the danger of not doing something like profiling to prevent problems from what is a far more worrying danger viz: that he alienates a massively larger part of the population - the majority of whom are probably not racist - but who are having problems with the cultural differences this is highlighting.

Why is the debate constantly be taken of course? This profiling is a smoke screen, in fact the whole debate about prevention is. I firmly believe we need security to stop extremists now, but we have to deciede whether we want to live forever under this threat, or treat the root causes of terrorism.

Superficially this is the Israel / Pallestine issue, Chechnya etc. The problem also lies deeper in the extreme global inequality, which is a product of global capitalism and many regimes which are supported by the UK/US.

Why does no one ever mention Western support for Saudi Arabia. Not only is this country one of the most extreme theocracies in the world, it is also one of the most unequal countries. Simultaneously it is one of the richest in terms of natural resources. Everyone forgets that bin Laden is from Saudi and so were fost of the 11th of September bombers.

This country is a hotbed of Islamic extremism, but it is barely mentioned in the debate. We need to look outside of the narrow debate in the Western Media.

Ask the Israelis - they have been profiling for years. If you have visited the disputed territories, especially if you are a lone female, you will be subject to hard questioning by a succession of people. They have never forgotten the Palestinian who fooled a pregnant girlfriend to go and visit his family without him and hid a bomb in her case at Heathrow.

Having watched Newsnight this evening, I am absolutely shocked that a senior member of the Police is essentially an apologist for Muslim Terrorists. His refusal to even accept that the major and probably only terror threat in the UK comes from Muslims was absolutely shocking and shows how much that community is in denial. If this is the case how can we expect any help from the Muslim community in the fight against global jihad.

As a result I fail to see why people should not be searched purely based on age and ethnicity. I also fail to see why the Muslim community should feel insulted by this. When I was in Israel I was constantly questioned and searched by the authorities as I am an asian female. I didn't get upset by it. If anything it made me feel safe and probably explains why El Al has never lost an aeroplane to a terrorist attack.

So either Muslims need to accept that they will get greater scrutiny as a result of their comrade's terror acts or else perhaps we need to institute Nick Griffins suggestion and stop any Muslim between the ages of 15-50 from flying except on a one way ticket to another country!

Yes, profiling is oviously good. You target those people you think may be thinking about these things. Innocents are innocent and it is a pain if you are stopped, but a small price to pay if it saves your, brother, sister or grandchilds life.
In the late 90's early 2000's in London we targeted young white males, who we thought were up to no good (I have second hand evidence of this), but we did it to try and cut crime. Now we are trying to save lives, which is more important, I know what I think?

How ironic to hear a met police officer saying we can't use profiling, I don't think they would have chased Jean Charles de Menezes and shot him in the head if he had been white.

It's a dangerous game targeting someone just because the are of a certain ethnic origin

The Police could not tell the difference between an "Asian Muslim terrorist" and the innocent brazilian Jean Charles Menendes

What hope have we that profile will enhance security when it just opens up the way for discrimination and mistakes

I am happy to be profiled as a single white male. After all I could be a radical convert pretending to be a run of the mill agnostic.

I don't see the point though of wasting valuable resources on families and old age pensioners who do not fit the profile of suicide bombers

Oh and by the way Emily, Richard Ried was an IC3 male, not as stated on your program an IC1. Please, when making statements of fact, try to ensure they are right.

alistair little, you should research statistics before you quote them. Please point me to the evidence for this 95% of terrorists are young black muslims - nonsense. Show me one piece of evidence and that doesn't include what that ridiculous women from the Manhatten Institute just said.

If people with freckles, small noses and blue eyes were bombing innocent people I would horrified if (since that fits me) I was not subject to further security checks. It doesn't matter what our faith and beliefs are. We are all at risk to these attacks and should ALL do what we can stop any further atrocities. If that means I am singled out based on my likeness to a terrorist profile and have to answer a few more questions at an airport that is a price I am willing to pay to make this country safe for ALL. Why can others not accept this is common sense and in ALL our interests. Such a shame people's pride and selfishness is the price some innocent poeple will pay with their lives!

I am utterly disgusted about creating passenger profiling. Surely all you will do is concentrate on innocent people whilst probably those gulity will be walking through unnoticed.
I am a British Doctor, muslim by birth but non practising. I have many other muslim friends who are doctors and who are serving this country, putting in endless hours and helping to stop the NHS from sinking. Are we then to be targeted as potential terrorist just because of our country of birth, stopped from flying, treated as second class citizens, and segregated from society? Surely this will create even more animosity? Is it not better to create more understanding, and try and improve foreign relations and foreign policies in order to target the root cause of the problem, rather than just creating more divisions between the people living in this country? Whilst obviously realising the critical state we are in, and having had friends who were involved with treating the atrocious casualties of the London bombings, I cannot see how targeting people like me and my muslim colleagues is going to do anything to improve the situation we are facing.

There was a confrontation on the programme about this that generated more heat than light. I don't quite understand why Heather Macdonald of the "centre-right think tank, the Manhattan Institute" was invited on, as she didn't appear to be an expert on terrorism, forensics, race relations or anything other than her own opinions. Macdonald seemed obsessed with making contrarian points that were basically just Islamophobic ("why don't Muslims do more to condemn..." etc.). She repeatedly failed to address the point that as soon as you concentrate on one set of passengers you've made a huge security hole somewhere else. She also seemed to think that valid "empirical evidence" included her prejudices. At least a BNP speaker or Gary Bushell or Melanie Phillips would have been British, but I don't think you should have had them either for similar reasons, i.e. not adding anything that isn't superficial and ignorant opinion. Couldn't we have more moderate, sensible and informative points of view that might show an emerging consensus, instead of confontations and wind-ups?

Our senior policeman talks about potential racism if profiling were introduced, yet comes on TV as the representative of the Black Police Officers Federation. The first thing he should do if he represents all odf the community is to resign from that organisation and get it banned.

Of course profiling sounds like common sense and with hindsight it would probably have worked in the past. But the paradox is that it would've worked only because it was not applied in a systematic way and the terrorists were aware of this fact. Otherwise they would have made sure not to fit the profile and thus run an even smaller risk of being detected than without any profiling at all. Profiling leads to a false sense of security and thus, effectively, to less security.

just wathcing news night..ali desai has been introduced as muslim police officer whereas the lady from amercia has been introduced as from right wing think tank...if religion is an indentifier, why is it only used for muslim...can we not expect a little objectivity in this regard...why couldn't emily introduced the lady from america as jewish Ms X (can't recall her name) from think tank....recently labour MPs (signed a press release on newspaper) were also qualified as muslims...could we expect that bbc when mention transport secretary's name it qualifies with his religious identity ie Jewish Douglas Alexander or MI5 leader as jewish Ms Manninghamm...i wonder whether bbc would dare to do that....

Having watched tonights program I am sure the profile of the 'terrorist' is just like in a John Wayne movie. Baddies always look like baddies. The US really doesn't like anyone other than WASPs. Can't really trust foreigners, especially those speakers of other languages.

Who would have thought ten years ago that Blair would be at Bush's command arogantly disregarding his own MPs and a deputy prime minister who appears only to draw a salary.

Crisis what crisis?

Parliament is in recess, got top have the hols - especially if its free.

Wake me up when its time for tea!

As an academic I would like to add to the criticism that so called profiling is a possible security measure that could be used in airport security.

The technique has considerable limitations and is far from precise. The greatest problem is that its accuracy depends upon having a considerable amount of personal detail which is unlikely to be available in this kind of mass security application.

Its greatest drawback in this situation is that it is very time consuming to do properly or any where near 100% effectively. Academics are more cautious of such techniques and know their limitations and pitfalls.

So calls from aviation chiefs for such techniques to be introduced are nothing more than commercial avarice and ignorance seeking a solution that minnimises business/economic disruption.

i'm sorry Nav, i doubt there's any reasonable explanation for that imbalance

Passenger profiling? Its depressing to think that all people who "look like a Muslim" will be under suspicion.Is there no one standing up for personal freedom and civil liberties. If so get in touch and ill join the fight. Terrorism has always existed and it is wrong to use murder as a way of getting your point across, but Ben-Gurion was terrorist. Nelson Mandela was a terrorist.This could all have been avoided if Tony Blair would have had the courage to stand up against the US and not been a poodle. The most depressing thing of all is that there is no alternative to these hawks who are dominating world politics. Koffi Annan and the Bishop of York are the only moderate voices i can hear at the moment.

comment 34 Michael Hall.

Spot on.

The MET representative was an absolute disgrace to his uniform.

It actually scares me, that such a person is a Chief Superindedent.

He should resign immediately.

I was surprised that Ali Dizaei appeared on Newsnight as a significant figure in the National Black Police Officers Association. Why was there no representative of the White Police Officers Association to put their point of view? Would this be deemed racist? Is there no White Officers organisation because it would be racist? Why is A Black Officers organisation not racist?

Also, why, for the first time in my experience has a senior official of a selective police organisation been called upon and allowed to comment on a political matter which affects the whole community BUT in his capacity as a representative of the Black Officers Association and not to represent the views of the police in general.

You have made a fundamental error. It demonstrates quite clearly that our black police are being politicised and could well be presenting a partisan view of issues of policing which should be National policy not group policy. The error was compounded by the fact that he was quite wrong in his analysis and should have been challenged by someone more robust than those involved in the discussion with him. I found this profoundly disquieting.

The question of racial profiling is absurd and immoral. The Tamil tigers ,the cheycheans are not arabs,Mckveigh was not an Asian ,etc. Simply bad people are bad people and their actions must be condemned because of atrocities they commit.
But it appears, we're all just towing the line of the leadership while shying away from the truth of the matter. First and foremost, the state of Israel by itself has committed more international crimes than any other nation i know and since 1967 has defied the Un more than any other nation on earth.
Second, assuming that Israel was a Muslim nation supported by a powerful Muslim nation that wanders everywhere it likes, would the Western democracies sit by and allow that Muslim Israel to whack it neighbours as the present christian/judaist Israel now does. The answer is NO ! So should the muslim palestine, and Lebanon just cherish Israel's overlordship and bullying. I thought every life ( christian or Muslim ) is the same and precious. Where're the God fearing leaders not preaching the true gospel according to the books.
No one profiled the irish during the Irish bombing days in the UK, and it's a known fact that despite the military might of the UK , the matter only came to conclusion through a political dialogue where the concerns of the affected parties were recognized and discussed.
As dispicable as the actions of the fundamentalist is ,yet they might be a class of the hopeless and maimed. why not have a look at what they consider the disparity of our policies.
So why can't we ask other nations to leave their lands and stop the support of the repressive arab regimes by creating free and fair democratic elections. And we should learn to accept those elections and the cultural variations in the political philosphy of democracy.
Lastly, the origin of the recent events between the Hizbollah and the Israelis was not the seizure of the soldiers, but occupation is the problem. Why can't we require Israel to leave all the occupied territories so that if anyone from either palestine or lebanon allows cross border aggression against any other state should be invaded and internationally punished for such acts. I'm just interested in peace,but with the current trends of events, it seems both israel and the surrounding states are being exploited for the benefit of others. Let this proxy wars and policies stop.
Occupation everywhere, anywhere is wrong same as terrorist acts is dispicable and should not be tolerated anywhere. But the causes of such venom always with special references to our foreign policies must be adressed. Let allow posterity to have their own day on this planet.

The chief superintendent on tonight's program obviously has his own agenda that is already bordering on racism of his own. In this so called multicultural utopia with its human rights policy why is there any need for an association of black police officers. This surely is not "politically correct" can a white or Chinese officer join I doubt it. What if some officers wanted to start an association of "white police officers#, would they get support or funding? NO, they would probably end up in court on some racial hatred charge. This is the same guy who says that Muslims need to integrate further in to the wider community, what a great example he sets.

Its time for the Muslims of this country to stop being so naive and precious, drop the self pity, delusions of persecution, condemn the terrorism, inform on the terrorists and get real. There are complaints of their youth being alienated where as in reality they are alienating 95% of the UK population against members of the very religion they claim be acting on behalf of!

I don't have a problem with profiling. It is obvious why a young Muslim should get closer scrutiny than a non-Muslim. I also understand why Muslims feel a little peeved about it - but I think we need to take it on the chin - because it is totally understandable.

But what really does anger me and I think is totally out of order is people saying it's "Your problem!" as if we can do anything about it!

I am a Muslim and have been all my 47 years. I work and live amongst the Muslim community. I don't know of any Muslim who isn't completely against the terrorists. All the Muslims I know speak out against the terrorists.

What more are we supposed to do?

Not only are we also the targets of these terrorists (Not only have Muslims been killed in 7/7 911 etc... but far more Muslims have been murdered by these terrorists world wide than non-Muslims - FACT!!!) But we are also the subject of racism, bigotry and xenophobic attacks.

Then people like the ex-police comissioner say "It's our problem" or "Muslims must confront the terrorists"

Does he think we all meet with them behind closed doors or something?

It's a subtle form of racism - an accusation of all of us that we are in league with them.

I'm sorry but you will find that most Muslims do not know any terrorists to confront!!!!!

Hassan

If we continue to use the type of security used recently on person in a airport they will basically stop running, so we must strike a balance.

Passenger profiling does not mean we arrest, charge and search every single Muslim or "Muslim looking person" going any where near a airport, it means that Muslim men between 18-late 20's will be subject to some times more often security screening, as this is where the major threat comes from, people need to accept that saving where the threat comes from is not raciest, it is fact.

if any one stopped and searched is innocent then they have NOTHING to fear.

Muslims seem to forget that security forces don’t discriminate on the safety of any one, Muslims died as well in 7/7.

The point is, if we have any tools we can use against extremism then we should use them, as we as the British people white, black, Asian, Muslim, Christian and every one else can not afford to have another 9/11 resting on our heads because security didn’t want to search a young middle eastern looking man for fear of being labelled "racists"

I too was astonished to listen to a senior policeman claim that his Muslim community are the 'victims' of this latest outrage, almost to the point of saying that we are to blame for letting his Muslim brothers try to bomb us off the face of the earth. What sort of mindset can turn aggressor into 'victim?
I thought the lady from America had it exactly right when she said the obvious profile to search for was the middle eastern/asian profile because time and time again they have proved to be the problem. Why can't that community accept the blindingly obvious and do their bit to help our country?

It is interesting how this 'new' idea of profiling is beginning to reassure the some of the population (white). It has after all been going on for some time. This is merely a political trick to appease fear in the general population & can in itself be dangerous.

Being Sikh, I have experienced & seen profiling in action & have no real issues so long as any interaction is courteous. Having recently come back from a trip to America I had no issues in how I was 'processed'.

But there exists a fine line, repeated interrogation is likely to become counter-productive, alienating non-Muslim Asians (& liberal Muslims) causing further attrition.

My biggest fear is that profiling will bring the necessary distraction required for white, black or oriental Muslim terrorists to conduct a successful attack.

The proposal to profile the Muslim for more extensive airport interrogation would succeed in further repressing an already vulnerable ethnic minority in this country. The idea that Islamic or Asian people should automatically be suspected of potential criminal acts would very soon become reminiscent of the Nazi propaganda campaigns against the Jews in the 1930s prelude to the Second World War. The question we really should be asking is, "What has been so fundamentally wrong about British and American foreign policy for so long, that individuals have felt cause to take such drastic action arguably to defend their way of life?". The government's intention that we should attach the term 'terrorist' to such people and assume them insane, in some ways causes the public to stop thinking rationally about the causes of this problem and the motivations behind attacks to this country. I am not suggesting 'sympathy', but rather a rational and measured investigation. If, as most of us in the UK believe, the war in Iraq was illegal, by definition all deaths caused by the UK in that campaign were unlawful killings. From that perspective, are the actions of 'terrorists' in this country that far removed from our own actions in such campaigns? That we should be considering extending the demonisation of ethnic minorities in the Middle East to people in our own country is abhorrent.

Profiling may help, i want that help to make the UK safe for my friends and family, political correctness has destroyed common sense, if we catch some religious terrorists thats great, we need to start to correct the imbalance of minorities dictating to the majority, today!.

Passenger profiling is a very good idea. We all play the numbers game in our daily life, wheather it be in business or private.

At my age, I seem to remember someone called Enoch Powell. He, if I recall correctly, seems to have been proved correct, in his predictions.

For another version of the truth, I recommend people go to:

Watch the movie, and then try to determine whether or not you believe what you hear and see.

You can only make a good decision if you have all the information on front of you.

Can we please stop pandering to a tiny percentage of our population? Why am I constantly hearing about Muslim 'sensitivity'? Why do we have to worry about offending the 'community' from which the terrorists are coming? Answers please, and in the meantime, put visible profiling in place, and if the Muslims don't like it, tell them to get on-side and shop those who preach hate and stir up trouble.

If Adam Kelway truely feels that way why is he still here? Perhaps we can organise a whip round for him. How much is a one way ticket Adam?

Adam Kelwick - Bye Bye, enjoy Iran or Syria or Saudi. Don't forget to repay your student loan - and forget coming back here when you wake up and crave a bacon butty.

Terrorism emerges from prejudice, fear and usually inequality in some form. I cannot think of a better way of encouraging terrorism than by introducing demonstrative passenger profiling. The ironic thing is that passenger profiling already exists - though it's not often discussed. If we are honest, how many of us already feel uneasy if we are traveling with someone fitting the profile of a 'terrorist'? By formally acknowledging this we would be playing into the hands of those who wish to further segregate our communities. This idea would legitimise discrimination, supported by the most unintelligent of arguments: terrorism is written on the heart not on the sleeve.

Having just watched the Newsnight debate between the Manhattan think tank and Met reps I feel thoroughly exasperated that our policing is in the hands of someone so subjective who is deaf to the intelligent insights of his co-interviewee. Her eloquence put him to shame and all he represents. Just as the Roman Catholic church protected the IRA so the Muslim "community" is harbouring its terrorists. Just as the Irish community was indiscriminately searched and questioned for over 20 years when travelling which makes perfect sense as the Irish community were the perpetrators therefore clearly the Muslim community should be profiled letting the rest of us get on with our lives PEACEFULLY. If you don't like the country then leave and fight your war elsewhere if you are that selfish.

Of course not all moslems are terrorists, but since 9/11 99% of suicide bombers have been proved to be moslems or moslem converts who, without exception, have fitted a particular profile

Therefore, do we really need to be treating all passengers as being of the same risk ? the couple with their young children going on holiday to France or Spain; the party of young schoolchildren, verified by their teachers, from a small town in middle England on their way to Germany;a group of young women on a hen party to Dublin etc

Of COURSE it's right. It's Political Correctness gone mad to imply that we all represent an equal potential threat. Let the overcooked mums and dads with their mewling progeny through. Ask the bearded mullahs to step to one side. OK, 3-yr-old Kevin MIGHT have a belt strapped to his waist which mum Michelle intends to detonate at 30,000 feet, but the chances are slim. Life has risks. Let's focus on those who represent the greatest statistical likely root of it, and the mullahs will just have to like it, lump it, or roundly condemn the cause of it.

Luke makes some valuable points to the debate about guests and the tag they are given in the introduction. I suspect Ali is more than happy with his tag as a Muslim police officer, significantly more happy then the IPCC.

Of course profiling should be used!
Statistically its the best approach for weeding out the trouble makers.
Its about time that the community leaders of the profile under most recent scrutiny takes responsibility that terrorists are being bred under their noses. Members of said profile are just as likely to be murdered as are he rest of us!

Newsnight's summing up quoted the muslim policeman but there was no quote from the opposite view. ±«Óãtv showing it's bias?

It was great to see the American Lady destroy the met policeman's (im sure he only got his job because he is asian muslim) absurd rhetoric.Its the terrorists fault we are being searched and it has to be done.You might find it degrading but tough.The consquences are worse.We cant escape logic for the sake of political correctness.Unlike British politicans,the Americans seem more willing to combat and not pander to Islamic fascism. Im a British Hindu, for the safety and reassurances of others,im willing to accept being searched.If there were Jewish bombings in Saudi Arabia. I doubt the Saudis would treat the Jew (or another race or religion) so courteously as Britain treats Muslims here. Even after 7/7 and the latest episode the British are treating the Muslims well. Surely its time for Muslims to reciprocate this kindness and allow themslves to be searched for a problem of their own doing and not play the victim.I feel pity for Sikhs for have unfortantely been tarred with the same brush,but have in fact done nothing wrong.That and risking the lives of others (be it white,asian or black) for the sake of political correectness are injustices here.

Unlike Irish terrorism, Islamic terrorism will not stop if we withdrew from Iraq or the Middle-East. While the Irish would have stopped, if we gave back Northern Ireland.There are no concessations we can ever give to quell Islam Fascism unless we completely submit to this totalitarian dogma or choose to combat it.

It was great to see the American Lady destroy the met policeman's (im sure he only got his job because he is asian muslim) absurd rhetoric.Its the terrorists fault we are being searched and it has to be done.You might find it degrading but tough.The consquences are worse.We cant escape logic for the sake of political correctness.Unlike British politicans,the Americans seem more willing to combat and not pander to Islamic fascism. Im a British Hindu, for the safety and reassurances of others,im willing to accept being searched.If there were Jewish bombings in Saudi Arabia. I doubt the Saudis would treat the Jew (or another race or religion) so courteously as Britain treats Muslims here. Even after 7/7 and the latest episode the British are treating the Muslims well. Surely its time for Muslims to reciprocate this kindness and allow themslves to be searched for a problem of their own doing and not play the victim.I feel pity for Sikhs for have unfortantely been tarred with the same brush,but have in fact done nothing wrong.That and risking the lives of others (be it white,asian or black) for the sake of political correectness are injustices here.

Unlike Irish terrorism, Islamic terrorism will not stop if we withdrew from Iraq or the Middle-East. While the Irish would have stopped, if we gave back Northern Ireland.There are no concessations we can ever give to quell Islam Fascism unless we completely submit to this totalitarian dogma or choose to combat it.

Giacomo, where do you live? Which country?

It was great to see the American Lady destroy the met policeman's (im sure he only got his job because he is asian muslim) absurd rhetoric.Its the terrorists fault we are being searched and it has to be done.You might find it degrading but tough.The consquences are worse.We cant escape logic for the sake of political correctness.Unlike British politicans,the Americans seem more willing to combat and not pander to Islamic fascism. Im a British Hindu, for the safety and reassurances of others,im willing to accept being searched.If there were Jewish bombings in Saudi Arabia. I doubt the Saudis would treat the Jew (or another race or religion) so courteously as Britain treats Muslims here. Even after 7/7 and the latest episode the British are treating the Muslims well. Surely its time for Muslims to reciprocate this kindness and allow themslves to be searched for a problem of their own doing and not play the victim.I feel pity for Sikhs for have unfortantely been tarred with the same brush,but have in fact done nothing wrong.That and risking the lives of others (be it white,asian or black) for the sake of political correectness are injustices here.

Unlike Irish terrorism, Islamic terrorism will not stop if we withdrew from Iraq or the Middle-East. While the Irish would have stopped, if we gave back Northern Ireland.There are no concessations we can ever give to quell Islam Fascism unless we completely submit to this totalitarian dogma or choose to combat it.

Why should the vast majority of law abiding travellers be so inconvenienced as at present because of the actions of a tiny minority of criminal extremists? Of course we must have profiling - common sense dictates that. Unfortunately, the UK is now governed more by political correctness than by common sense and the chaos of the past few days is clear evidence of that. Why should we be afraid to admit that the current threat to our safety and security IS coming from a particular religious group, whether the Muslim community likes it or not, and therefore focus our resources accordingly? IF the mainstream Muslim community REALLY condemns extremism then let them root out the cancer in their midst instead of appearing to live in a state of constant denial. It IS their problem and ultimately, THEY have to solve it. Of course, any fool knows that Muslims come in all shapes, sizes and ages and from many ethnic origins. That does not alter the fact that the current major terrorist threat to this planet IS from Muslim fundamentalists - it's a fact of life, how ever unpalatable that may be to the 'liberal left'. Meanwhile, the rest of us should be allowed to go about our daily lives with the minimum of disruption. No-one is going to 'target' the Muslim community when searching for the perpetrators of the recent firebomb attacks in Newry, Northern Ireland are they? That would fit a different terrorist profile altogether, so what would be the point? Come on everybody (The Government in particular) - let's get real here and use some common sense for a change!

The problem with this whole "WAR ON TERROR" is on the bases of looking for Muslims terrorists. This means we are searching muslims for the terrorists amongst them. There are over a billion muslims in the world and maybe five million in the UK how do you propose to excise the terrorists from this large pool without Alienating the whole community would be virtually impossible.

The problem should be looked at from a more basic point we should be looking for terrorists who are muslims. Since there are less terrorists than muslims "even in the middle east" then the search pool is smaller making our task much more achievable. I might be over simplifying this but if we went after the vested interests in the arms industry and monitored the people with the skills, knowledge and access to create such devices.

I think simply going after TERRORISTS of which there might be 100000 at most instead of looking through a million mosques looking for the odd or even terrorists.

It seems to me that this discussion of profiling has confused two separate issues.
One is the use of applied intelligence to narrow down the possible suspects; the other is the use of stop-and-search of anyone of an ethnic type.
I would be surprised if the first isn’t already being carried out, by both the security services and the airlines; while the second, if it were applied would, I think, be completely counter productive.
I suspect that those who suggest that one shouldn’t mind being searched for every flight has no experience of constant stop-and-search and should read a bit of recent history.
As a Londoner during the eighties, it was common to see young black men being stopped by the police, because the majority of street crime was being carried out by young black men. I don’t know how successful it was for catching the bad guys, but what it did do was alienate all those who were good, law abiding people, who felt they were being picked on for their ethnicity. If you were a successful black man you had an increased likelihood of being stopped (‘What do you mean, where did I get the money for the car?’).
The upshot was a complete mistrust of the authorities which the Met police have had a lot of trouble overcoming, if the have.
Going back to this system, where if your Asian you get stopped and everybody else doesn’t is a guaranteed way of making a group of innocent people very angry.
The sensible person, who wishes to put out a fire, doesn’t do it by adding fuel!

We had been here, haven’t we? Another very interesting posting with a twist of spin…
One thing is discussing profiling in technical terms, for example “It’s effective?� , but like somebody said above “It’s common sense�, the question is, why the “common� doesn’t seems to apply to the Muslim community according to their leaders? I spoke to many Muslims (colleagues) and they don’t seem to care, I wonder why the Muslim Leaders seems to don’t take responsibility? I honestly don’t understand: If the government wants to take action to tackle terrorism is bad because is “their� community, if the government doesn’t take action then they said that “is our problem�, it will be possible in the short term that the “so called� Muslim Leaders to make sense at all?

Why they cannot said “Yes, we got a problem�, instead of trying to put the entire problem outside their communities? I’m sorry, but the media is failing to prove this fact, we are questioning everything except the communities where the problem is located.
I wondering when the “Muslim Leaders� instead of questioning this profiling that in worst case scenario can cause a 5 minutes delay while question by police, they don’t ask why the extremist are targeting the whole society with their violence. That will be productive and will help to end this problem, the rest is just responsibility waiving,.

Attn Adam Kelwick Post 53. Are you completely deluded? Have you actually visited any of the countries you feel are more tolerant than the UK. Since your list included Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon I would guess not. Saudi promotes a particularly brutual form of Shariah Law by which supposed female adulters are actually stoned to death. It is also where the age of consent is just 9 and where homosexuals are killed. When I was there I couldn't go anywhere without a male relative. Oh but I forgot, as a Muslim you consider that all to be absolutely fine.

As such my suggestion to you would be to move to one of these countries as fast as possible to be with your own kind. Then you will quickly realise how great it is to live in a tolerant, liberal democratic country which subsidises the Muslim community in the form of benefits and council flats.

By the way I noticed you didn't mention Sudan in your list. Is that because the Arab Muslim Janjawed are systematically murdering, raping and mutilating everyone there, esp white people (even those who have converted to Islam). England doesn't seem so bad now does it?

Bring on passenger profiling - 99.99% of passengers have nothing to hide. However, to demonstrate the freedoms and equality of this country the same rules must apply to all. After all, it's accepted as routine for all passengers in Israel. By victimising Muslims, this will probably lead to more disaffection of the youth - maybe this will lead to 'softer targets' such as other forms of transport becoming vulnerable (I am NOT advocating this by any means).

Of course racial profiling works. It's as useful as gender profiling. ie, the police are on the lookout for a 52 yr old female with blonde hair, leeds accent. Why would they stop anyone else, does it make them sexist if they only stop one male?

No matter what race etc you are, at the moment the risk at hand is from a specific group. A few terrorist from this group in the last few years have been white...etc..., but,
most muslims, residing or visiting this country are NOT white, middle class men. They have not been young girls with babies.

So why single out young asian men with beards? Because that is what a male bomber, muslim is meant to look like. It's the discription of a male muslim that the "main men" of Islam give us time and again.

Yes, that means that clever terrorist will be an exception to this rule. It doesn't take much to work that out.

So, if we go this route, we should go for the most "normal, english, christian, 2.4 children" families. Ok, that's all air travel cancelled. That's the majority of the UK. That's the majority vote of a democratic nation. That's not a suicide bomber.

So can all who fit that group then shout racism? They can then all vote to exile all muslims? Is that what you want?

In a certain war not so long ago, all young men from this country risked their lives, and some gave, to fight in a war for freedom. A war against religious bigotry. A war that was about freedom of all. The right to choose, the right to live.
My relitives died in those wars.
I will happily be searched at an airport, a train station, any where in my country, to maybe save a life or stop a crime. I would, as a policeman, stop and do the same.

It is not my liberty, it was given to me, it was fought for. If you live free in this country it is not a right. It is something you have been given. Whatever your creed or religion, you owe that choice to another. If you want a dictatorship, go somewhere else. We are a nation for all, but it is not for everyone. Anyone came join, but you must join.The stuggles of the few must often be bourne by the many, but the wants of the few must never outweigh the needs and lives of the many. More than this, the many should never use the lives of the few for their needs, and so should it be for the few. I owe my life to many, and i would give it to a few.

Matt. Terrorist don't need to kill to achieve, only to scare. 1-0 to the terrorists.

If we had not let all these people into our country then we would not be in this mess. They all should be rounded up and sent back to there country of origin.

My two cents

Whether we want it or not, profiling will occur. When so many on these forums are saying that young Muslim men are angry at British foreign policy and that's why they want to blow us up,(almost justifying it) then pretty obviously young Muslim men are the greatest threat. Statistically, so far, they are also the greatest threat.It would be PC madness to ignore that.

Profiling will never be completely successful since some terrorists wont fit the frame, but please, let's not pretend that any of those caught or blown up so far have been particularly sophisticated, or that white converts constitute anything but a tiny minority.

Anyway, profiling young, male arab or asian looking muslims does not presuppose that there isn't more sophisticated profiling also going on or that security services should relax their overall vigillance.

If we return to the pre 10 August level of checks AND introduce profiling then security staff(a)will be no less effective than before,(b)have time to concentrate on the highest risks and (c) will enable passenger throughput to get back to pre 10/8 levels.

No one will deny the need to work with the Muslim communities but in shaping anti-terrorist measures we put everyone at risk if both Muslim leaders AND the Government are afraid to say where where the threat is coming from

I found it heartening that a senior police officer could offer a moderate response to the current hysteria. Terrorism must be fought but in a way that does not infringe on the basic human rights of all the citizens. We do live in a democratic country dont we?

abdul daboh... please take your quite obvious anti-Israeli stance else where... I agree Israel is not silver lined.

However what you posted seems to have nothing to do with Passenger profiling and is just a left wing anti-Jewish, anti Israeli rant.

Why must the majority of this country always bow and make way for the sensitivities of the minority.

AND- i find the fact that their is a black policeman’s association to be inherently racist, why can i (a white male) not join it... because my skin is white, however is i formed a white-policeman’s association (for examples sake) it would instantly be labelled racist and i would be carted off to the nearest

I am a white 58 year old business man who travels a lot. I have an Asian son in law and a gorgeous mixed race grandson. Why are we profiling passengers? It is only because of money. How can we be safe if profiling allows a white nutcase onto a plane full of Asian British passengers? Security is all about making as certain as we reasonably can that every check possible has been made. Profiling simply allows the airlines and airports to reduce the checks in order to reduce the cost of security. How many people fly in and out of the UK each year?
Millions - Raise the funds by charging more for the ticket and do the job properly.

Best Regards

Barry

I find the sudden resurrection of calls for 'profiling' quite depressing. If we live in a genuine liberal democracy, we also need to safeguard the dignity and civil liberties of minority ethnic and religious groups, as well as the physical safety and security of the majority.

I think it is very easy for those members of the population who know that they will be the least likely ever to be profiled to join that mindless, illiberal clamour that is now demanding that 'Muslims' should be routinely profiled in public as terrorist suspects, and singled out for more questioning in our public areas.

What will so-called profiling be based upon? Ultimately it will be based on the prejudices of the profilers. Many of the profilers will have racial and anti-Muslim prejudices. Thus when a policy of profiling in our airports is officially sanctioned, it will be open season on any innocent member of the public who looks like a Muslim. I think it is wrong and unjust to single out people in a crowd merely on the superficial basis of their appearance, and then subject those people to differential treatment from the rest of the poulation. This differential treatment will amount to a form of blatant discrimination, and sensible public policy should NEVER be predicated upon prejudicial or discriminatory practices.

As a middle-aged Afro-Caribbean male, I am old enough to remember the old racially discriminatory "Sus" Laws (also widely used in Apartheid South Africa as well). I particularly remember how these laws were widely abused by some racist police officers to target innocent law-abiding young Black men who were going about their lawful business, to endless stops and searches. From personal experience, I can honestly say that as an innocent person, being routinely stopped and searched in public can be a deeply humiliating and upsetting experience. Whenever I was stopped and searched, I knew, deep down, that it was not because those officers genuinely believed that I had committed a criminal offence. Rather, they had singled me out because of how I looked, and on the basis of an ignorant racial stereotype that linked the way I looked to criminal activity. If you re-introduce the "Sus" Laws again - this time against young Muslims - we will be turning the clock back again, and build up a lot of unncessary resentment among a community whose intelligence we desperately need in order to defeat these evil terrorists.

What we need is not racial and/or religious profiling, but a sensible use of modern technology that screens everyone who uses our airports, irrespective of what they look like, how they are dressing, or what faith they practice. The racial and religious prejudices of profilers will not defeat terrorism. The only things that can do that are good intelligence and non-discriminatory methods of security screening that applies equally to all of us.

This is wrong and dangerous! Not only does it descrimininate race, image and cuture, adding to the tention that can provoke terrorisam, it opens the door for terorists to get through checks esily under a different "image". Terroists come from a variety of cutures and with these at the disposal of the terror networks a bomber can esily be sent to fit the "safe" image and therfore be disregarded. To steriotype terorists is so nieve it bares resembalance to the characters from "Team America".

All the points I have seen on the Passenger Profiling issue are logical, and most are valid. However, I think that a sound basis for action must stem from a more detailed analysis.

For instance, we need to look at our own motivations for endorsing or rejecting a point of view:

Sample argument FOR passenger profiling: *It's common sense not prejudice*
Counterarguments: 1) How can you be sure it's not prejudice? 2) "Common sense" tends to be quoted as a justification for any thought which is not questioned - does that make it right, or is this arrogance?

Sample argument AGAINST passenger profiling: *It could increase the risk of terrorist attacks by people not fitting the profile, since security will be less with regard to these people*
Counterarguments: 1) Is this necessarily the case? I don't think I've read anywhere that it is necessary to reduce security checks on anybody (correct me if I'm wrong), only to increase security checks on target groups. 2) I do not think it is necessary or even desirable for the public to be made aware of the exact details of a strategy for terrorist detection, but I think it likely that any such strategy will not be as black and white as current discussions suggest.

The next dimension to consider is the balance between civil liberties and protection. Oversensitivity on the first is antisocial, and on the second is tyrannical. We should always question anything which makes a value judgment about a "certain type of person" - the ultimate expression of which we see in Guantanamo Bay. But we should not lose sight of our social responsibility to co-operate in the protection of our people (I mean humans).

Finally, since this issue is immersed in our own emotions (notably fear) we are likely to jump to any conclusion which gives the greatest appearance of safety. If the public are motivated largely by fear, the politicians who represent us will dutifully represent that fear at a higher level, and create a negative world devoid of empathy, and where knee-jerk reactions are the norm. Let us all strike the right balance, co-operating by accepting minor inconveniences but not accepting fear or injustices.

As discriminatory as profiling look, the fact is that all the suicide bombers are either Asian,North African muslims or their unfortunate converts. The muslim community has to accept the fact that British goverment has aright to protect it's people, therefore I don't see anything wrong with it. only people who have something to hide have a proplem with this. They need to look inward ie how can they teach these young people to kill infidels(non muslims) and come out to say that Islam is peaceful? there are foundamental issues that they need to address out instead of using oversee's policy as excuse.

I agree with Heather Mandonald in some ways its not right that white british family have to go through the same checks has a Asian man I think its about time muslims in this country realised that they should obey our laws and stop all the forced marriage and so called honour killings we are told that muslim men respect their women but this does not show anyone respect we have to respect thier laws in their country even if we only visting them so they should respect ours the trouble is that people are frightend to say what they really think because they are frightend off getting called racist

Isn't it time that we left political correctness behind and sought a safe and peaceful environment for all like-minded British citizens? I live in High Wycombe - one of the new terrorist capitals, apparently - and remember it in my childhood as a rather sleepy little English market town. Now there are times when as a white, middle aged, middle class woman I feel disenfranchised, outnumbered and resented by the Asian communities (mostly Muslim) which have taken over whole parts of the town and seek to enforce their own cultural standards over the whole community. In my student days in the 1970s I demonstrated in support of Black and Asian immigration and wanted to see a multi-racial society in Britain but tolerance must work both ways. Come, become British and enjoy both our standard of living and our culture, but you do not have the right to seek to change our culture and impose your own. As a pacifist I was appalled last year to watch local police supervising an Asian parade last year at which unsheathed swords were being carried and waved. If either of my (white) sons carried a weapon in the streets they would, rightly, be arrested. If we are to avoid further rifts in society we must forget multicultural as a label and try to forge all our disparate elements into a British monoculture which we can all, Christian, Jew, Muslim or Atheist, be proud to call our own

It is a disgrace for a police representative to talk about comparing rape victims with profiling. He like many others , particularly the ±«Óãtv are in denial about muslims fundamentalist terrorist. Your American guest was correct , we are not looking for Irish lassies or eskimos here, these people who show placerds wanting english people beheaded and who are ready to blow us all to kingdom come should have no refuge and profiling is the least we can do to protect the majority law abiding population of this country.People have had a bellyfull of appeasment when the majority of us have few democratic rights to be heard. I hope you see my free speech comment , thank you.

Profiling should be used it it works and not if it doesn't.

The decision should hinge on its effectiveness and not on whether it offends one sector of the population. PC should not be a factor.

I was astonished at how unintelligent our senior Asian policeman came across. Yes, he, like almost all of our Muslim community is in denial, and refuses to take any responsibility for the radicalisation of their youth. What exactly are these so called moderate Muslims doing to help find terrorists and fight radicalism? All we hear are complaints.

As to his ridiculous example of comparing women who are raped to terrorists, claiming we would not profile for potential racists, well, get with it matey, we would, we'd LOOK FOR MEN. How did he get his job!?

There is this person who wakes up in the middle of the night believing everyone is out to get him and want him dead. Although none of his companions have ever said anything to him, he still believes this entirely and this man also happens to believe all his companions are going to hell. Is he deluded or just a Fundamental ..............;

Fill in the blank JCM

It seems to me that the real problem is that that in-air airline capacity greatly exceeds on-ground capacity and certainly it overwhelms any rational system for processing passengers. Last Monday I flew back to the US from Manchester and had to queue for 20 mins just to get a newspaper. Then another 20 mins for a lousy Starbucks coffee. And then 15 mins for a warm (even by UK standards) beer to get rid of some of the accumulated angst. It was awful but nothing compared to how it must be now. Funnily enough getting through security was the least problem. Same thing in Atlanta on the way out - in fact the same thing in all of the 15 or so airports I passed through in July in Eurpoe and the US.

It's become far too easy and too cheap to fly. Given the increasing pollution from aeroplanes why not let the free market solve this problem via its invisible hand? It might simply be that flying has to be made difficult enough that the number of people doing it drops dramatically.

Profiling might help for some time but it's not the long term solution that is needed. For example, taking your shoes off to be scanned was a quick fix solution to a Richard Reid threat but it ignored the esaily anticipated possibility of liquid explosives. If the idea of terrorism is to disrupt societies then even failed attempts are highly effective. Quick fix solutions that immediately respond to new terrorist modes of operation only make future disruptions all the easier. The goal of terrorists isn't to blow planes up just for the sake of it but is to wear societies down to achieve their goals. A smaller airline industry that worked but be less disruptable than a patched up version of what we have now.

Or what do we face next? Routine body cavity searches and throw-away plastic overalls to be worn after one's clothes have been checked? Why not? The real problem is bad planning and the solution to that isn't profiling or any other simple minded expedient.

I am a British citizen of Iranian descent. I happen to have been born a moslem but I am a devout secularist and have no time for political Islam, the concept of 'Umma' and all that stuff. This description applies to the vast majority of Iranians in this country, including Ali Diazeai incidentally, despite the impression to the contrary that might be gleaned from the other Iranian on your programme tonight: the unlovely Mr Ahmadinejad [I found his comment about Bush's approval ratings quite ironic, he himself is cordially loathed by almost all Iranians either in Iran or the diaspora].

My mother recently travelled to the States to visit her ailing brother, after a wait of a year for a visa due to a 'security clearance'. In the airport she was taken to a room and interrogated by some jobsworth about her plans, fingerprinted and photographed like some common criminal, and she missed her connecting flight. She is a normal everywoman, looks a bit like Margaret Beckett (she's going to kill me for that!!) doesn't wear a veil and she got treated in this disgraceful way.

This racial profiling business is a blunt tool, and it will target ordinary Joe Bloggses like me. It's a dangerous game.

Isn't it time that we left political correctness behind and sought a safe and peaceful environment for all like-minded British citizens? I live in High Wycombe - one of the new terrorist capitals, apparently - and remember it in my childhood as a rather sleepy little English market town. Now there are times when as a white, middle aged, middle class woman I feel disenfranchised, outnumbered and resented by the Asian communities (mostly Muslim) which have taken over whole parts of the town and seek to enforce their own cultural standards over the whole community. In my student days in the 1970s I demonstrated in support of Black and Asian immigration and wanted to see a multi-racial society in Britain but tolerance must work both ways. Come, become British and enjoy both our standard of living and our culture, but you do not have the right to seek to change our culture and impose your own. As a pacifist I was appalled last year to watch local police supervising an Asian parade last year at which unsheathed swords were being carried and waved. If either of my (white) sons carried a weapon in the streets they would, rightly, be arrested. If we are to avoid further rifts in society we must forget multicultural as a label and try to forge all our disparate elements into a British monoculture which we can all, Christian, Jew, Muslim or Atheist, be proud to call our own

Message for Adam Kelwick (e-mail no. 54)
If finding choice too difficult I suggest Iraq. Hope that helps although I do think the Sunni death squads profile other muslims before executing them. So if you're not a shiite go and best of luck.

Re Post 103. Crispy I've got bad news for you. The Islamic jihadists are more akin to the Ku Klux Klan than you might realise. They believe their duty is to either convert the infidels (ie the majority of us) or kill us. So you can take your pick. Either you become a Muslim and live under Shariah Law, or you'll be blown to smithereens.

People need to wake up to the fact that the Uk's foreigh policy is simply a ruse to make us Brits even more submissive when in fact nothing we do will enable us to win the hearts and minds of the Muslim community. That battle is now already lost and either we continue to follow Chamberlain's disastrous policy of appeasement (Hitler and Poland) or we belatedly stand up to the threat we face and fight for our country whilst we still live in a democratic Christian country. Otherwise as Colonel Gadaffi said recently England will become a Muslim country within the next 25 years. I for one intend not to be here when that happens..............

Stephanie @ 114

BRAVO.

i disagree with state profiling - the results can be extreme; Auswchitz for example.

At [24] Kashmir said he is concerned how many British people can't be bothered to separate a Sikh from a Muslim. Sir Iqbal Sacranie was on ±«Óãtv the other day and complained that the ±«Óãtv was inviting a lot of Muslim representatives but not other community leaders who also have something to say. People are being wound up by the number of Muslim voices being wheeled out by the ±«Óãtv and sadly some are using the occasion to raise the heat against Muslims and non-whites in general.

Profiling by race? not a good idea, but treating families and the elderly less stringently than single travellers seems fair enough. And no-one has asked why the stringent checks were applied to all flights when the threats were known to be against transatlantic flights.

People have suggested any objections to this proposal is political correctness gone mad. But this ignores the fact that, the logic on which the proposal is based if fatally flawed.

Not all Muslims are Asian. To suggest you can identify a Muslim (peace loving or other wise) by the colour of there skin is ridiculous. Neither can you identify an extremist terrorist by the way they look, they come in all colours (the bombers included Whites, Blacks & Arabs) & specifically profiling Asians makes the target group for would be terrorist too small.

Added to this the fact that 1/2 the Asians in this country are Hindu’s, Sikh’s, Buddhist & Zoroastrian seems to have been forgotten. The proposal pointlessly lumps together a whole group of very diverse people, who look sort of similar. This form of screen can only be counter productive. It won’t reduce the threat of terrorism but will make all Asian much more likely to be the victim of a racist attack.

I have to agree with the majority of the comments I've read so far. It is blindingly obvious that the present terrorist threat comes from 2nd generation muslims. In England, at least,this generation has apparently been 'radicalised' (like it's some kind of virus/disease that no-one quite knows the origin of..)
Why haven't other 2nd gen. ethnic groups become this upset about religion? I see that the Palestine/Israel conflict is central to the issue, as well as Iraq/Iran/Afganhistan,but what disturbs me most is that this mad jihad is based upon an apparent(to me, anyway,) effort to re-make Western societies using restrictive, religious and oppressive censures. Could this be more about power over than religion?

Stephanie@92 - Thank you for your insight & straight talk

For those of you who believe that profiling works, it might be worth reminding you that in 1986 a pregnant Irish woman unknowingly attempted to bring a bomb onto an El Al flight. I guess she hardly fit the "profile" of a terrorist at that time!

As some of you already mentioned, at the end of the day, what works are well trained security officers and good intelligence. Under the current circumstances, the latter requires, at some point, the voluntary and positive contribution of members of the muslim community. I am not sure we will achieve that if we start discriminating against every single muslim or "browny/darky" who is about to fly...just because he/she is statistically more likely to be a terrorist! This would reflect not the intelligence but rathet the ignorance of those in charge of protecting our lifes.

matthew judkins...i think you're suggesting that if a terrorist frightens someone they've won ? 1-0 ? make that 2-0, 'cos these idiotic policies are a home goal, read my original post

at the expense of sounding arrogant, i think the merit in my position over the idea that poking fingers at or into people of apparently asian descent, can actually help longterm, is self evident

terrorists would only use such policies to their advantage (ref my original post), better make that 3-0

not directed at any poster in particular, but it's good to see many people still seem to get their slightly wonky views from the 'big boob-send in our boys-blah blah bibble-rivers of blood REDTOPS, bravo (not) remember, not everyone sees things as 'clearly' as you do, but that doesn't make them inferior, or weak

When the terror threat was from Northern Ireland, I would have been shocked to learn that everyone was being treated as a possible terrorist.

If the police are looking for a rapist, they profile men as possible perpetrators. Quite sensible, really. Why on earth would we expect them to profile women just to be politically correct?

As far as I am concerned, people should be profiled according to their likely threat as a terrorist. It is a waste of time for everyone to be treated as a possible terrorist when the main threat comes from these MUSLIM extremists.

Finally, only one change of law is necessary in the wake of this threat and that is to reinstate the death penalty for treason. That is, ultimately, the crime they are committing.

Passenger profiling of course is not a desired means of how we live, conduct our daily lives etc. However, we live in troubled times. It is unfortunate that the main terrorist suspects are of Asian appearance (as I am of Asian origins myself) and that all law abiding Asian citizens will then be subject to greater inspection by the law enforcement officials. That is the reality and instead of condemning the extremists, the Muslim community appears to me anyhow to make excuses rather than tackle what seems to be a deep rooted problem within their ranks, as must the Western Governments be inward looking to try to stop the growth in extremism at home and the causes of this. But please do not "shoot the messenger"! As we live in a democratic environment here in the West, we at least have the freedom to demonstrate publicly unlike in most Islamic nations...

It is this hypocrisy that irks me and the attitude amongst many Muslims will further alienate Muslims and non-Muslims. Is this the kind of society we wish to live in rather than a pluralistic environment like we have in London?! And rather than blame the past etc. please note that history does not make the future!

People have suggested any objections to this proposal is political correctness gone mad. But this ignores the fact that, the logic on which the proposal is based if fatally flawed.

Not all Muslims are Asian. To suggest you can identify a Muslim (peace loving or other wise) by the colour of there skin is ridiculous. Neither can you identify an extremist terrorist by the way they look, they come in all colours (the bombers included Whites, Blacks & Arabs) & specifically profiling Asians makes the target group for would be terrorist too small.

Added to this the fact that 1/2 the Asians in this country are Hindu’s, Sikh’s, Buddhist & Zoroastrian seems to have been forgotten. The proposal pointlessly lumps together a whole group of very diverse people, who look sort of similar. This form of screen can only be counter productive. It won’t reduce the threat of terrorism but will make all Asian much more likely to be the victim of a racist attack.

In addition to my last ramble ..It is only natural any way in which the terrorist profile changes the system will change to deal with that ..That is how security works isnt it ??? What about ww11 I am sure our Security Agencies have done research into how things were done then and maybe have learned some lessons from what worked as they had to deal with german agents trying to cause havoc here and maybe they could improve what may have worked then as they surely had a lot of security issues but these Terrorist are at War with the 21st Century and Freedom ..Some people never learn from History ..especialy when that History is tampered with to suit a Skewed veiw ..Now are you getting the feeling ..Been there Did That Etc ???

I feel slightly uplifted reading the comments tonight.

Are we Brits emerging from our apathy?

The current debate about passenger profiling reminds us of just how stubborn political correctness is as an ideology and of how it is so entrenched in our society. Even when human life is at stake, it's exponents refuse to bow to common-sense. Passenger profiling in order to help counter Islamic fanaticism, is not about prejudice, but about looking first at those areas within which the greater threat is, logically, calculated to exist.

In addition to my last ramble ..It is only natural any way in which the terrorist profile changes the system will change to deal with that ..That is how security works isnt it ??? What about ww11 I am sure our Security Agencies have done research into how things were done then and maybe have learned some lessons from what worked as they had to deal with german agents trying to cause havoc here and maybe they could improve what may have worked then as they surely had a lot of security issues but these Terrorist are at War with the 21st Century and Freedom ..Some people never learn from History ..especialy when that History is tampered with to suit a Skewed veiw ..Now are you getting the feeling ..Been there Did That Etc ???

Profiling is a useful tool, but it is only a tool and no substitute for a proper security check. It should be quite possible to give a 'light touch' security check to those passengers who clearly pose no security threat whilst reserving more thorough checks for those passengers who arouse the suspicion of airline staff, security staff etc. who have been trained to identify travellers who meet a particular criteria. But profiling should not just be directed at passengers but also at flights; profiling those flights which pose the most likely risk of being targeted by terrorists which, at present, appear to be flights heading for the United States. Therefore, the only sensible place to have a full security check is at the boarding gate of those flights which are considered to be at risk. Any checks prior to final boarding can easliy be compromised at some airports by outbound passengers being able to mix with inbound passengers and those in transit, affording an opportunity to pass over materials brought into the country from destinations where, perhaps, security is not as tight as our own. Furthermore, there may well be airport employees - who are usually not subject to rigorous search if they hold an airside pass - willing to assist terrorists by bringing seemingly innocuous materials airside and passed over after the would-be terrorist has cleared security. The final point of boarding is the only environment where a search can be effective. With a restricted amount of hand baggage and sensible passenger profiling it should be quite possible to carry out a quick search of hand luggage just prior to boarding. The argument will then be who carries out the procedure, the airline or the airport authority. My view would be that the airport authority should be responsible for general security but that the airlines should employ properly trained staff to carry out final hand baggage searches, much in the same way as they carry out document checks just prior to boarding. Such arrangements should ease the horrendous queues seen over the past few days.

Ali Desia. A racist police officer representing a racist group (the Black Police Officers Association). His racist bigotry was only to apparent in his remarks.

You would not have the BNP or the Ku Klux Clan on air, why give this racist air time?

In addition to my last ramble ..It is only natural any way in which the terrorist profile changes the system will change to deal with that ..That is how security works isnt it ??? What about ww11 I am sure our Security Agencies have done research into how things were done then and maybe have learned some lessons from what worked as they had to deal with german agents trying to cause havoc here and maybe they could improve what may have worked then as they surely had a lot of security issues but these Terrorist are at War with the 21st Century and Freedom ..Some people never learn from History ..especialy when that History is tampered with to suit a Skewed veiw ..Now are you getting the feeling ..Been there Did That Etc ???

In addition to my last ramble ..It is only natural any way in which the terrorist profile changes the system will change to deal with that ..That is how security works isnt it ??? What about ww11 I am sure our Security Agencies have done research into how things were done then and maybe have learned some lessons from what worked as they had to deal with german agents trying to cause havoc here and maybe they could improve what may have worked then as they surely had a lot of security issues but these Terrorist are at War with the 21st Century and Freedom ..Some people never learn from History ..especialy when that History is tampered with to suit a Skewed veiw ..Now are you getting the feeling ..Been there Did That Etc ???

Credit where its due. The newsnight discussion on Passenger Profiling was political journalism at its best.

But when it comes to every issue raised in that discussion, I read the best analysis over a year ago in a piece updated partially in response to the London bombings. I've just read it again and it could have been written today.

Harry Stottle makes much the same argument which endorses your own conclusion (that the risk of being killed by a terrorist is on a par with the risk of being killed by a train). He points out (with references) that in the 15 years since 1990:

"These 7,812 are the total deaths caused by terrorism during that 15 year period around the world. A little over 500 a year.

Now lets put that into perspective. That 15 year total of 7,812 is about as many people as were killed by Aspirin type drugs (NSAIDs) in the United States in the year 2000. It's roughly two thirds of the number of Americans killed by other Americans using guns in the year 2002. It's about as many people as are killed in road traffic accidents, in the United States, every 10 or 11 weeks.

Why are those comparisons relevant?

Consider how much money, time and effort are put into reducing deaths by those various causes. In fact I challenge the reader to find ANY national budget dedicated to reducing death by Aspirin, firearms or road traffic. Against that, the so called War on Terror has so far (June 2005) consumed a budget in excess of $300 Billion dollars."

then he goes on to ask the question (in the light of the revelation that the terrorists were apparently home grown):

"How then can we expect the Intelligence services to identify future potential bombers? At the moment the only obvious profiling characteristics are that they were young male, British and Muslim and a couple of them spent a few months being taught in Pakistani Madrassas. Are we now going to institute intrusive surveillance on all young male British Muslims? Or just those who spend any time out of the country? Or even forbid them to visit their ancestral homeland?

And, when that fails, because, for example, it has provoked females to join in, or worse, white non Muslims who are appalled at the imposition of Big Brother against a British minority, do we then extend the intrusive surveillance to the entire population? And when that fails, because a sizable proportion of the population is now alienated against its own government, how will we avoid the Civil War that these incoherent responses have produced - exactly as bin Laden has planned, anticipated and prayed for?"

There's a lot more in that vein. Makes more sense to me than what I'm hearing from the politicians.
(https://www.fullmoon.nu/book/chap.php?id=c10_2#financial)

In addition to my last ramble...It is only natural any way in which the terrorist profile changes the system will change to deal with that...
That is how security works isn’t it???
What about ww11 I am sure our Security Agencies have done research into how things were done then and maybe have learned some lessons from what worked as I am they had to deal with German agents trying to cause havoc here.
Maybe they could improve what may have worked then as they surely had a lot of security issues to deal with.
The Terrorist are at War with the 21st Century and Freedom end of story.
Some people never learn from History.
Especially when that History is tampered with to suit a Skewed view...
Now are you getting the feeling...Been there Did That Etc???
And Surprise, Surprise Hezbollah are still firing Rockets.
Hands up all those who aren’t Surprised
Here we go again!!!!!!

Strange that I didn't hear a word of complaint about profiling of Muslims when the Muslim only day was arranged at Alton Towers. I'm sure a Christian only event would be attacked as forcefully as profiling by likely threat at airports.

In addition to my last ramble...It is only natural any way in which the terrorist profile changes the system will change to deal with that...
That is how security works isn’t it???
What about ww11 I am sure our Security Agencies have done research into how things were done then and maybe have learned some lessons from what worked as I am they had to deal with German agents trying to cause havoc here.
Maybe they could improve what may have worked then as they surely had a lot of security issues to deal with.
The Terrorist are at War with the 21st Century and Freedom end of story.
Some people never learn from History.
Especially when that History is tampered with to suit a Skewed view...
Now are you getting the feeling...Been there Did That Etc???
And Surprise, Surprise Hezbollah are still firing Rockets.
Hands up all those who aren’t Surprised
Here we go again!!!!!!

Hi, Robert (26)
I used the tiger analogy in (2) to explain simply why I pulled out a gun - common sense prudence. If it had been a hamster, I wouldn't have pulled out the gun because my common sense tells me that hamsters do not usually pose a threat. I therefore actually profiled both creatures and was more cautious about one than the other.
It would be ridiculous to pull out a gun (ie be so cautious) every time I saw some living creature, just to make the tiger feel better or satisfy someone's over-sensitivity about tigers' feelings. And it would be foolish not to pull out the gun when meeting a tiger for the same reason. Knowing this, the tiger would be better advised to give me a miss rather than snarl for the reasons you pointed out.
I am quite prepared to admit that I act the way I do for my own peace of mind, not that of tigers. It's about defending me.
I'm not sure how this analogy suggested Star Wars to you because it was about the prudence, common sense and MY peace of mind when I profile, but I presume you have a thing about guns. That would make another good thread (as, of course, would animal rights), another time.

Most of the comments here seem to be debating the "right or wrong" of passenger profiling.

Whether profiling is right or wrong is immaterial. The question should be - is it expedient? If, as I suspect, it is more effective than not profiling, then it should be deployed.

If profiling is more effective to the benefit of all except the terrorist, then the correspondingly exacerbated offence or inconvenience to a minority does not matter. Sorry, but there you go.

One point of view seems to be that minimising offence is as important as preventing acts of terrorisim. This is a clearly unsustainable view.

In support of his views, Ali Dizaei points out that many of the 7/7 victims might have fitted such a profile. This is a red herring. I am confident that, offered the choice, many of these victims would have preferred to be alive and offended, than dead and dignified.

What of the possible future consequences?

Supt. Dizaei, in common with his colleague ADC Tariq Ghaffur, believes that the perceived offence of "travelling while Asian" (sic) could drive more Muslim youths (of whatever racial profile) to join militant organisations.

While Supt Dizaei may or may not be right to identify this danger, he rather undercuts his own argument.
If Muslim youth is as disaffected as he contends, then it is surely right to prioritise them.

I also feel that Supt Dizaei has handed ammunition to extremists on the right, as evidenced by some of the posts on this forum.

By arguing to inconvenience all to avoid inconveniencing the few, he risks creating a dictatorship of the minority. This is nourishment for mainstream white bigots, which should be avoided at all costs.

I would expect an officer as senior as Supt Dizaei to be aware of such danger, and can hope only that his espousal of such impractical views is personal rather than professional.

We live in a world dictated by unpleasant practicalities, and though it would be *ideal* that no one be offended, it is *necessary* that crime prevention and apprehension be informed by logic and prioritisation.

Earlier on Newsnight I saw my worst nightmare - Chief Sup. Ali Desaie speaking against passenger profiling. I am amazed that a man expressing these views should be wearing the Queen's uniform.

watch out Caroline Wilson ! your efforts to apply LOGIC and REAL common sense to this debate will only result in shouts of "liberal" and "politically correct", the usual responses of the 'everyday intelligencia' who seem to like this forum topic

Hello campers
Pleeeeease, when replying to earlier blogs, could you insert the number of the blog you are replying to - without threads, I'm getting bloody scroller's vertigo, eye-scanner's twitch and RSI in my mouse finger.
I know some of you just want to get something off your chest, but lots of us do actually read the threads and we welcome replies, pro, anti or demented.

To all the moronic (pseudo- intellectual) Newsnight viewers who don’t already realise this.

NEWS FLASH

ISLAM IS A RELIGION NOT A SKIN COLOUR (GREEN OR OTHERWISE.)

NOT ALL ASIAN ARE MUSLIMS!!

(I hope insulting your viewers won’t put you of publishing this.)

The simple reality is that profiling is a standard law enforcement practice. It goes on every day, and is part of almost any criminal investigation. It's clearly successful, or police services across the world would not be able to use it to such great affect.

I can understand peoples concerns, as it does raise concerns regarding discrimination. But the reality is that most Muslim extremists tend to be, well, Muslim. And most Muslim extremists tend to be of north African or asian extraction. That is reality, and to ignore that fact is to ignore reality- the most dangerous thing anyone can do.

I don't for one minute think it is the be-all and end all of airport security, but it does mean that those responsible for our safety can maximise the effectiveness of their resources. Using a reliable and proven technique to focus resources in the most intelligent and risk-aware way cannot be a bad thing.

Leila @128, fyi- the Asian sword waving parade you mention in your piece sounds like a Sikh Vaisakhi (Harvest Festival/ Religious). These cerimonial swords are usually carried by 5 orthodox Sikhs.

These cerimonial sword are a symbolic reminder to protect the liberty, honour & freedom of All-faiths. It forms the moral basis which has seen Sikhs fight for Queen & Country in two-world wars, helping acheive the freedoms we all enjoy today.

Priya@166

ISLAM is not a religion, it is a SECT.

SECT - Noun

a religious group which has developed from a larger religion and is considered to have extreme or unusual beliefs or customs:

@ 169

If you want to get that technical, so is Christianity, actually. I think most people here (& elsewhere) would consider both to be religions however, so I don't really see your point, if indeed there is one.

Qpine@170

Read the original submission (get some help if you want) & see if you can find the point, there is one.

Please Please Check this out: Ref 93 .

It has changed my mind, if it does somthing for you please post this address.

it is time for us all to have the choice of what to beleave.

Re Jason (159)

One reason why few Christians have objected to the Muslim day at Alton Towers is that Christian youth organisations have run a simnilar day at Alton Towers for the past few years. It takes place (I think) in May and gievs access to the rides during the day and finishes with an open air concert.

See

@ Oliver Rix (171)

Islam is, by definition (i.e. dictionary), a religion. So unless there is some deep, subtle irony or sarcasm in your original statement "islam is not a religion", I still don't see the point of your post, given that all religions were 'a sect' at one point or another.

Qpine@174

My case rests !!

John, i assume i can attribute you "demented" slur to myself ! :D

The New Cros fire is a good example of the Police looking for the wrong person by profiling. Bad Policing rules people out too quickly.

And are we not all equal? Is that not fundermental to our society? What do we have with out it? (superstition)
Simon

Hi Matt (176),
Ha Ha...if the cap fits, Matt....I was expecting a roasting from you after earlier trapping myself neck deep in simple tiger analogy and deservedly mauled by Robert (26). I wasn't referring to you in (165), but if you fit the profile....(!!! spurious link to topic)
However, the (165) request to put in thread numbers did apply (not refer) to you, and you didn't put a thread number on your last post (176) either, you naughty person.
It's great to read all the different views. I raise a glass to free speech and Newsnight. And the demented.....

Unfortunately this debate would only occur with this social group. If any kind of threat, whether terrorist or other, were to occur from any other kind of social group, this country wouldnt hesitate to generalise the offending group. But because this country has overturned its imperial past into a new liberal society, we are so scared of offending, and not to be been seen as modern liberal citizens, to the extent that we sacrifice our own liberal rights.

My social group seems to be the only social group that has had to change, and the only group that seems to accept things as they are, the only group that is scared of speaking up for itself, and the only group that seems to tiptoe around other cultures, but yet my social group is the actual indigenous(I use this word because quite frankly I dont know what I'm allowed to call myself now) majority of this country.

My social group has welcomed foreign cultures and given them the freedom to practise their way of life, But its getting increasingly hard to accept these cultures when you feel as though your own identity (yes, believe it or not, we do have an identity, and a culture, and a heritage that we are proud of)is being assimilated into the new all incorporating British citizen mould. But how can you feel any kind of kinship towards a culture that has an element of extremism towards your countrys concepts of life, or who displays more kin towards a race thousands of miles away by demonstrating mass protests against your society telling you that their God will condemn your soul, or who's most influential leaders always condemn terrorist actions, but always finish the sentence with "But".

I now have to accept this aswell as everything else which my group has to accept, such as being treated as potential Islamic terrorists whilst waiting for your flight for your long overdue holiday, or not been able to display patriotism towards your country because it may offend a neighbouring ethnic culture, a culture that would have been promoted to display our acceptance of that culture, or having the council or local charity change the name of a long standing tradition because there are now other religions in your area, or seeing the "indigenous" race, cultures and religion satiricalised and put on the comedic stage and offended to the extreme in all forms of media, whilst witnessing people condemn these very same scenarios as racist acts when applied to other cultures or races, or seeing this country under a constant terrorist threat, but yet, still witnesses a spiralling immigration problem because of human rights legislations, or seeing more importance being laid upon the enfringement of human rights of a suspected terrorist being detained for 90 days, then making the population not only feel safe, but be safe in their own country.

Unfortunately I believe that our political psyche is too far left. I believe this is the case because of our imperial past, and the association of the right wing with the events of World War 2, and I believe that a small piece of evidence of this can be found right in the heart of Westminster, as the primary opposition to Tony Blair throughout his terms has not come from the right, but from the left of his own party.

I strongly believe that the Government and Local councils need to be firmer with foreign cultures and see that they are the ones that need to change aspects of their own culture and traditions to fit in, not only with the political framework of this country, but also the concepts of this country, which means everything from liberalism and tolerance to satire and offence. As a large proportion of the cultures that are settling in this country do hail from Patriarchal, Totalitarian societies, which, ironically, have more in common with the society that we left behind (and seem to be so deeply ashamed of) then the modern tolerant society we've become, I believe that this is an essential requirement to settlement in this country.

This country needs to learn to stand up for its own concepts and believes, because if it carries on acting as the all accommodating state at the expense of the silent majority then I fear the tolerant may start to turn into the intolerent. If this scenario does unfold then what future does this hold for a liberal democratic country? This is were I believe the real threat to this countrys future prosperity lies, meeting the demands of the intolerant noisy minority, may make them tolerrant, but could also inadvertently, over time, turn the tolerant silent majority into the intolerant, and if this happens then we're all in serious trouble, whatever your race, religion, creed or colour.

I don't agree with Blair/Bush forign policys along with most uk citizens. I see the police make mistakes in many areas, including inocent people being shot or arested by the police. many towns and citys suffer socio economic deprevation and not only ethnic minoritys, asians or muslim people.
I am not happy with many thing that go on in Britain including some peoples wish to change our whole way of life because it offends them .
Their is no shortage of people wanting to come and live in Britain, to those who think they are disenfrachised and we are so racist and intolerant I hope when you leave you find this perfect place you are expecting on this planet, .
How come Isreal has made such progress in the last 50 years in their country when all around them has either stood still or gone backwards, instead of fighting for prosperity and progress why dont you start working for it. most muslims killed in the middle east are killed by muslims what does this tell you?.

John (161, and others, replying in part to my post at 26) the problem is that we are not dealing with tigers and hamsters here were dealing with humans.

If I thought profiling would really make us safer I'd support it. The point is (as made by others here) there are of Muslims of all races and, sadly, some will be radicalized regardless of their race. If I were recruiting people for terror attacks I would try to recruit people that did not fit any likely profile, wouldn't you? That's why I used the Star Wars analogy. This is not a game where the 'goodies' will turn up in white looking beautiful and the 'baddies' in black speaking with funny voices. In real life, profiling applied en masse in this way is a crude instrument that ignores the fact that the enemy is TRYING to be invisible.

Also, whether they are logical or not, we can't ignore people's feelings. One of the best chances we have of identifying extremist activity among any group is for people among that group to report anything they see which is suspicious. If you risk alienating these people by using such a technique you must be sure it will be very effective. I simply don't believe it will be.

BTW I don't have a problem with guns (not that I'd want them legalized in the UK). If I met a tiger in a forest clearing I would definitely get my gun ready if I had one. But then I'd KNOW I was in danger from it and I wouldn't need its co-operation to sort the dangerous tigers from the benign ones.

Let us hope that this issue will be a beginning to the end of the cancer of political correctness. In this instance everyone should not be treated to equal examination at Airports for fear of upset to Muslim or Asian travellers. It is about time for some common sense to be used. Passenger profiling, intelligently and courteously used should offend no one 'inconvenienced'
As for CS Ali Desaie, please have him on more often - this buffoon of political correctness helps us to 'know thou enemy'. Loved the bit ( twice repeated )about creating an offence of 'Travelling whilst Asian'.

The thing that annoys me is that people never stop to think why people become terrorists. Muslims become terrorists because of the treatment they see being dished out to their fellow Muslims.
If profiling is brought in for searches in airports then you may as well put up a billboard for terrorist recruitment to look at while they are being searched. It might not recruit them there and then but it will make them think about it.

I wonder if the bloggers on here are being profiled by the security forces? its interesting how we judge each other and ourselves especially when an extreme situation occurs and there is a shift in perception. how easy we begin down the road of discrimination is search of libery and freedom.

Re post 184. Relax. We are not watching this blog Chris.

NickT: I live in northern repeat northern Italy :-) . Giacomo

Priya (166) wrote: ISLAM IS A RELIGION NOT A SKIN COLOUR (GREEN OR OTHERWISE.)

NOT ALL ASIAN ARE MUSLIMS!!

(I hope insulting your viewers won’t put you of publishing this.)

Dear Priya - Yes, Islam is a religion - and a pretty backward, repressive and malevolent one at that.

PS: "I hope insulting your viewers won’t put you of [sic] publishing this".

I live among many muslims in West Yorkshire. One middle class restaurant owner with family was moderate and concerned over radicalising youth in Dewsbury whilst at the same time, expressing a loathing for the Americans.

The ±«Óãtv have a lot to answer for in undermining traditional values, promoting rights without responsibilities, they even, last night, presented animal rights radicals as victims in Silent Witness.

They'll be the death of us all, muslims included as at 7/7.

Blair should read all the above - it might put him a bit more in touch. ±«Óãtv, can you please put it under his nose (on his return from the Caribbean, obviously - wouldn't want to spoil his holiday.)

Bill (Post 60) - you are not the only person referring to WW2 and talking about locking up all Muslims in this country - I hear it all the time (from racist bigots or frightened or exasperated people, whatever you want to call them).

186 - oh thanks - now Im nicely reassured in my paranoia

I travelled from Belfast yesterday through Birmingham on a day visit for business purposes. Not having heard about the relaxed security I took nothing that would cause a security delay and it seemed that most fellow travellers were taking the same practical approach to travel.

As usual when the Belfast flight arrived at Birmingham, passengers were channeled through a corridor so that Special Branch could take a photo and take a look at the arrivals (isn't that profiling?). The last time I travelled through Birmingham we were subject to a 20 minute hold-up in that corridor because Special Branch were caught short by the early arrival of the flight (BMI Baby 1 Special Branch 0).

Leaving Birmingham yesterday I had my photo taken at the security point where they check our boarding pass and a little bar code was placed on the reverse of my ticket, so that when I went through the special area for the off-Britain areas of the British Isles another person could scan that barcode and check that indeed I had not morphed into another being between checks.

There are two ways of considering this experience. One, given that there Air Pakistan leaves from the same airport and people on that flight were in the same queue as me (and not photgraphed and barcoded), is all that security for Northern Ireland not a little bit misplaced given the current security priorities. And if that is not accepted because it sounds racist, lets look at it another way. Lets accept that profiling already takes place on citizens from the UK, internal to the UK. So would it not be appropriate to extend that to all those travelling to desitinations, or returning from those desitinations, where terrorist risk exists. That seems common sense and changes little except the priorities on who is profiled.

To much resource? The technology already exists, is relatively new (barcode tagging has only been introduced in recent years), is in place and proven. And Special Branch is already at airports...

Ask Peter Barron. He started this dialogue with his scruffy youth ezperience. He doesn't tend to be stopped now, but he is still being profiled.

1. profiling is wrong because it doesn't work. it's obvious and leaves a gap. (see data mining problem mentioned earlier - a serious problem for statistics).
2. profiling is wrong as people who fit the "profile" are offended as they don't actually fit the "profile".
3. profiling is wrong as it plays into the hands of those trying to cause harm - meaning that those who live in the UK, for example, but don't want to harm us or themselves feel sympathy for the cause or feel alienated by the process - adding to the stupid us or them mentality that bush and blair are pushing.
4. i am white with blue eyes - if i convert to islam will i be stopped? maybe we should all start putting our religion, sexual preference, football team and party we vote for on our passports?

The world has gone mad - and things like profiling will just fuel that fire. everyone should be searched; same procedures same processes same results.

I've been thinking some more about this proposal, and trying to take the emotive race aspect out of the equation. In principle the aim is to manage risk. Financial companies do that everyday by scoring insurance or loan applications. To use an analogy, they don't rule people out on the basis of where they live, but they do use the postcode, amongst other criteria, to make judgements about risk.

They aren't saying everyone in a postcode is going to default on a loan, or claim on an insurance policy. They use a 'points' system to take a variety of factors into account.

If 'profiling' were to be introduced it would have to consider a variety of risk factors. As Ali Deszai [?] pointed out last night, one cannot have an offence of 'travelling whilst being a moslem'.

Of course, the key issue here is that in business, whilst no one sets out to lose money, certain customers will default on their loan, or claim on their insurance. They just have to set that off against the pool of customers who don't.

Of course that kind of trade off, of risk of an attack, against the loss of business caused by increased security checks would never happen, now would it ?....

Some degree of profiling is useful. As other people have commented the 85 year old granny is unlikely to be a suicide bomber and neither is a young mum with 3 toddlers. It is about statistical probability and effective use of resources.
however - search should always be conducted with dignity and no one should make any assumptions. As someone from NI in the 70s - being search had to be accepted and frankly I tolerated it if it helped identification of terrorist who gave us all a bad name. However if the attitude or treatment of those who searched me was not proper then I would take offence.

Im a 28 year old muslim from Pakistani extraction, tall, about 6ft 2", dark ( well olive skined ) 16 Stone and I dare say rather Goodlooking, I fit the profile and I guess my fist length beard doent help.

So why would I be apposed to profiling, well it is linking me to an act or possible act that I fell is absolutly abhorent.

Please consider this, a terrorist like a Child Sex offender is a vilified member of our great british society, Most sex offenders are White, Males aged between 18-60. How would one meeting this profile feel when every time they approach a school, a cummunity centre ect. to be pulled aside for targeted security reasons.

Simply put I understand why people call for profiling and to be honest I dont disaprove, what I will say is that constatly be associated with an action I feel is so dispicable does not make me more understanding.

Secondly what suprises me is that people are missing the key point. Is there something inherent within Islam that would bring people to such actions, (let me promt your answer NO) If It is then all muslims are a potential treat and the only solution I can see is to ask All of my fellow muslims to wear a bright yellow cresent upon our chests visable, which would allow people to istantly see that I am a muslim and then they can choose to deal with me.

Or

As any investigation or understanding of humanity in general and Islam in particular will be able to say without hesitation that there is nothing inherent within Islam that would cause concern to anyone quite the reverse I believe.

Of course profiling is right. Uncomfortable though the concept is for some, it's the only way that security can function effectively whilst minimising disruption. If the terrorist threat is coming from little old Jehova's Witness ladies, then focus enquiries upon little old Jehova's Witness ladies; if it's coming from Muslims, then focus upon Muslims. What's the problem?

@ Charles 193

Profiling does work. To claim that it doesn't is to claim that a fundamental and highly successful policing tool used across the world which has proven value, doesn't work.

Profiling doesn work, and anyone who claims otherwise is simply being ignorant, wilfully or otherwise.

Philip (194) is absolutely on the money as regards his insurance example. It's just another example of how profiling is part of our day to day lives, whether we like it or not.

What does a Muslim look like? Can you tell a South Asian Muslim apart from a South Asian Hindu? Well, you'd be a better observer than I am! They are very difficult to tell apart. So you would effectively end up stopping all 'South Asian Looking' men.

Not all paedophiles are white men, but 99.99% of all paedophiles prosecuted ARE white men!
How many people would tolerate a situation where police, looking for a paedophile, stopped and questioned/searched every white man?

Do we really think that a terrorist is so stupid as to conform to our stereotype? They are criminal geniuses (like perhaps some sophisticated fraudsters) and will go to enormous lengths to avoid detection. They are not going to deliberately match an identi-kit and queue up at a check-in and wait to be searched.

We have to understand that we are NOT dealing with 'Islamic' terrorism (that's as offensive an expression as 'Zionazi', 'Zionazism', or the 'Christofascism of the neo-cons'): if this was indeed 'Islamic' why aren't all Muslims terrorists? They are so few in number, and so unseen, that even their closest family members are shocked when their acts come to light.

Terrorism is akin to cancer, save that it grows in the mind. To discover its causes is not to justify its existence (we'd never conduct Aids research if finding a cause was an excuse for acceptance).

If time and again Muslims are saying that foreign policy is a contributing factor, why is that view being dismissed? 'But 9/11 was BEFORE Iraq, it was before Lebanon', politicians chant (they also say 'Bali' was in Indonesia, a muslim country - except that the terrorist targeted Australians, as their government slavishly piggy-backs on any US campaign). How disingenuous that is! Consider this: what if a battalion of Muslim soldiers, armed to the hilt had encamped in the Vatican? How would the Catholic world react? Would it be a benign reaction, or do we think there would be something more severe? Well, Saudi Arabia, the whole of that peninsula, due to Islamic historical reasons, is an Islamic 'Vatican', and it has thousands of US soldiers based thereon. From what I've read in various press reports the Saudi Bin-Laden had that specific grievance against the US, and against the Saudi regime for having allowed that. So we are back to 'foreign policy'.

So why don't we start by listening to our own citizens? What's wrong with moulding our foreign policies around what we all want? Why don't we engage the Muslim community is active discussion and argument on foreign policy?

An ethical foreign policy? That sounds like a panacea.

I'd like to COMMEND Ali Dizaei on your programme last night for clearly understanding that race-based policing is both counterproductive and has well-documented racist effects even when advocated by well-meaning non-racists.

Dazaei is a CREDIT TO THE FORCE and was well able to meet the half-baked generalisations of his interlocutor, Heather MacDonald. He had a great way of putting it, the line about not wanting to create a "new offence of travelling while Asian"!

Consider the following generalisation, offered by MacDonald as a "truism" - that most suicide bombers tended to fit a certain profile therefore it made sense to target anonymous individuals who fitted the most general of profiles.

That ignores the fact that the bomber is an extreme minority. Therefore targetting a sizeable minority only disproportionately affects the chance that if you are innocent you are much more likely to be detained if you also belong to that minority. That's a generalisation MacDonald should consider. A great way to cause division across communities where we currently have resilience and a great way to impose an unfair and arbitrary burden upon members of a minority who already feel sometimes under seige.

The effects of race-based policing gone rife were visible to all during the Katrina disaster. Many folk were seen first as criminals and looters other than in dire need of humanitarian assistance. Get your own house in order, Manhattan Institute?

Please let's not have right-wing spokespersons masquerading as intellectuals again. Dazaei did magnificently under the circumstances.

Out.

To all those here baying like hyenas for profiling. Remember:

the last time our police and security services used profiling, an innocent Brazilian had his head blown off with seven bullets and those responsible have been let off.

How many more innocents are you prepared to sacrifice to satisfy your racist thirst for discrimination?

Profiling doesn't work, and if it works it only works to an extent.

Ok, let's think...firstly not all so called "terrorists" or real threats are actual Muslim and brown. The Oklahoma bomber was a white man. Not all threats are actual males either.

Secondly, you can't tell if someone is a Muslim male. The women tend it give it away with the headscarves, but the men? Seriously you cannot tell a sikh from a hindu from a Muslim if your stereotypical image is that all brown asian men are Muslims.

"But sikhs where turbans" you may well say. But here's something for you; so do Muslims.

And yes, those who have recently become interested in the religion do dress up in thobes and turbans and hats and scarves; but they are the least of your problems! Take the time out to get to know them, and they are usually the most humble of men who are abhorrent to such acts of terrorism.

And yes, if they were one of these terrorist wannabes they would change out of the thobe! And, probably, would take a drink at the bar...the lesser of two evils, in order to slip through the "profiling".

Ok, so my next point...does no-one remember that out of the 7/7 bombers one was actually a black man married to a white woman? Hasn't really been mentioned since has it? Everyone's just talking about the asian blokes involved. But yes, he WOULD slip through the profiling.

So, what is the purpose, point and aim of profiling?

Very simple. The government needs an enemy on this so called global war on "terrorism" (aka let's finally subjagate the middle east to be our slaves forever).

And what makes the best enemy?

The identifiable one.

So when anyone sees a brown man with a beard they can identify him as "enemy" and be cautious or, if they're drunk, aggressive.

Just like Hitler did with the Jews in Germany.

An identifiable enemy.

This war on terror is very simply a racist war.

And if your brown you're the enemy.

And if your white you're the victim.

How many young Muslims who would fit the profile travel to the USA?
And what do they think happens when they land there?
If profiling works to enhance security (as part of a bigger picture), then we should all accept it. Or perhaps those that oppose it don't fly???

I believe that safety of passengers is paramount ,and the goverment and BAA should do their upmost to make sure that all necessary checks are in place to make sure that no one get to a plane with the intention of blowing himself of and killing innicent people.
The idea of jihad make me mad as a
moslim i feel saden with the manupilation of religion for personal goals .
profiling will not help to stop bombers to get to planes because other ethnic group can be recruted .
The race issue is always a sensitive subject and the goverment stand in iraq and lebanon has not help matters
I believe is about time that the goverment join forces with the EU and USA in order to find a longlasting solution to the palistenian problem and Iraq . and the idea of exporting democracy is the worst idea ever,because democracy trough out history people have to fight for it

As a "normal" western muslim (only way to describe myself these days) I have to say security checks are fine but how do you profile a muslim.

Option 1 - skin colour. Pardon me for looking middle eastern but so do a lot of others (sikhs, hindus, and even christians who are middle-eastern by birth). What about converts who are caucasian or chinese, etc?

Option 2 - name. So who exactly says that someone called Abdul is more likely to be a terrorist than say someone called Terry. No one heard of deed poll? What about converts who dont change their name?

Option 3 - dress code. bearing in mind that most western muslims dont actually wear an asian suit normally - I wear jeans and t-shirt myself.

Option 4 - The infamous beard profiling.

And if you did decide to only search asian looking people then you automatically include non muslims (back to the looks issue again).

And for those who are muslim and not in any way given to acts of terror, surely this becomes almost like persecution which makes it no better than a country like Iraq.

So do you really think profiling works? Can anyone see the drawbacks here?

Ali Dizaei wore the uniform of the METROPOLITAN POLICE on NEWSNIGHT and as such is deemed to have expressed the views of that entire force.

Being introduced on Newsnight as a representative of the BLACK police force meant nothing whilst wearing that uniform.

His views were a disgrace.

His obvious lack of intelligence troubling.

How did Ali Dizaei rise to the rank of Chief Superindendent?

For heaven's sake ±«Óãtv I just watched the lunch time news, and there he is yet again, Chief Inspector Ali (Bad Penny) Dezai with a re-run of last night's (playschool level) mocking comment about "Travelling whilst Asian". (Carefully edited of course). He made his absurd point last night. Is the ±«Óãtv now trying to make one of its own ? You are clearly not reading this blog and are failing to take on board the opinions of your viewers. Why not engage him for his own series of programs, "Name That Muslim" for instance. Maybe the Chief Inspector might like an offence of attempted speeding for those driving a Lada as well. You know it makes sense.

1) The term Muslim seems to be word of the decade and is used to describe not just Muslims but for some reason everyone who fits a middle eastern look. It's like saying every caucasion person I ever meet is automatically Christian - perhaps, and I'm only guessing here, some of them may not be. RELIGION and ETHNIC Group are 2 different things !!!

2) As a Muslim I say search me, I don't care. I want to feel safe when travelling too and I have nothing to hide. From that viewpoint I agree but as per my earlier post I dont see how profiling can work when it is obviously only going to be based on skin colour.

3) I read today in the paper about a meeting that took place between a high level Muslim group and Ruth Kelly and they were almost blackmailing her in to saying that unless we get Sharia Law here in the UK for Muslims then we won't talk to our disillusioned youth. THAT IS PRACTICALLY DISGUSTING AND CRIMINAL. Killing innocent people (of all religions and creeds) is unforgivable for any reason. I will right now say I do not want Sharia Law and there is no reason to have it. The UK laws are the law of the land and we must obey them and not try and segregate ourselves away from the rest of the UK. Thankfully the British Council of Mosques also disassociated themselves from these ridiculous demands.

4) The media seems to have concentrated only on the Isreal conflict in the last few weeks but not actually bothered reporting the true facts - ie Israel has invaded Lebanon and is occupying their land and has killed/ kidnapped thousands of muslims over the last 20 off years. For those who don't know any of this George Galloway covered this in a Sky News interview which will probably be removed and deleted very soon because he attacks Sky Newws and their biased reporting. To watch it click this -

5) Does anybody ever wonder why they found Saddam so quickly in Iraq but never got Bin Laden. is it because as Micheal Moore once reported the Busha and Bin Ladens; actually go way back adn used to be very good friends.

6) If Saddam can be tried on war crimes and other crimes against his own population, why cannot Bush / Blair be tried for War crimes for the stuff that happened in Iraq with the soldiers going berserk, etc. Surely it is the leader of the country that is to blame ???

7) When the USA attacked Iraq against UN policy should they not have been expelled from the UN? Then again the US will soon run the world (one country at a time).

8) The USA claims to be a democracy and land of the free but realistically actually is very racist - just look at the response to the New Orleans disaster.

Anyway I seem to have gone off the point but the above are interesting notes / discussion points to think about.

Enough ranting from me. What was my point anyway? Or yes, I am all for security searches but I dont see profiling working. Just implement same measures for all.

For those who say that brown skinned single male with beard is more likely to be terrorist then anyone else, you're living in a dream world and the first time someone gets through who is caucasian, married with a child but happens to be a terrorist (muslim or otherwise) then suddenly it'll be "whoops, I think we need to think again".

When I was a young copper in 1953 in Burnley, there was an offence of being found in an enclosed space or yard during the hours of darkness with face blackened or disguised. You could get arrested for it, just the same as hiding in a canal and breathing through a hollow reed.I don't think it has ever been repealed. Has C.I. Ali Dizzy ever heard of these offences ?Interesting!!!

I am just so aggravated by everyone categorising muslims into either a 'moderate' or a 'radical', islam is like being pregnant, you either are or you aren't. Simple as. Tell me, can you be 50% pregnant? I think not.

This 'profiling' nonsense is total and utter rubbish. Why should some people, namely muslims, be checked to see if they are carrying explosives and no one else? It would become very easy for anyone else to take explosives on board. Say, someone who is exploring the religion of Islam, who has taken the wrong root, but has not reverted to the path yet. If the authorities become this narrow-minded to alienate this group of people(because that is how it is or will be) no good will come of it. If the police want muslims to co-operate than maybe the police should take their own advice for once, and listen to what muslims have to say.

I refer to Chris Irvine 117.

Quite right Chris, and all on a plane without being searched before boarding, and with lots of hand luggage so that they could all spend the flight time suspecting each other. Although as they object to being subjected to profiling as they are in denial, then they shouldn't have anything to worry about should they!

The institution of state discrimination is something we should all oppose. This sets a very dangerous precedent, namely that it will be perfectly acceptable for an individual to be treated differently solely on their appearance. Hitler's germany made all jews wear yellow stars: apartheid gave blacks seperate beaches to visit and seperate doors to enter buildings. This is the road down which passenger profiling would lead.

Something which those in support of this like to forget is not only that terrorists do not fit a specific description but also that they do not target a specific group.

Another obvious point to make as that this would pour fuel on the fire of extremism. This is like handing Bin Laden victory on a golden platter. What better recruiting propaganda than institutional racism against muslims in the supposed 'free world'?

People are jumping to conclusions before we even know if there was a terrorist attack. Where is the evidence government claims it has? If Bush and Blair talked about the threat the previous weekend why was there no raising of the threat level for five days? If there was such a danger why was the alert level raised only after the arrests? If authorities were so concerned, why did Blair leave for holiday? and if that wasn't enough, if the threat concerned air travel, why on a plane? Why have we heard nothing of the one person who was released over the weekend?

Given the governments previous record regarding its claims, these are questions which we must all ask, and they need to be answered before we can accept this terrorist claim as fact. The media has done a poor job in this respect.

Shouldn't the profiling be based on whether someone has an arabic name rather than race? This would then include any Islamic converts in the profiling as well. I think this is a fair assumption to make considering the fact that everyone associated with 9/11 and 7/7 attacks were of Islamic faith.

Firstly I am a Muslim born in pakistan but grew up here in the UK.

FIRSTLY - One of the biggest problems we have is the so called Muslim leaders - e.g. Muslim Council of Britain. Who elected them, I don't remember voting. Do they speak for all Muslims here in the UK. I never agreed to that. My views are my own and they are firmly on the side of the UK Law.

Secondly all this talk about Jihad that these young Muslims talk about as a cause - bull! The REAL war is over in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, etc - what has it got to do with killing hundreds or thousands of innocent people - that's plain mass murder. To those people I say, as one muslim to another, if you really want to fight for that cause, get over there and fight in the REAL wars and get your ass out of the UK.

I have no problem with being searched because of my skin colour - it is the nature of the threat as many people say. But remember there's always bound to be the exception to the brown skin rule that may get through and that would be a disaster. I think a better policy is general searches of people without families - single males primarily.

For instance on a recent visit to the USA for work I had a nice chat with the immigration people of homeland security at the airport and my baggage was searched but it all took just 15-30 minutes and it was a pleasnt enough experience.

But if I was travelling with my kids as some otehr people were surely there was no need to stop them or at least not to go through the whole security questionning session. Can you imagine your kids after a flight being able to just sit still ?

I suspect that many in the anti-profiling crowd assume it involves cavity searching anyone with a dusky appearance. This is nonsense. Profiling is a powerful investigative tool. Its been used for decades. It is one tool in the box, one that helps to filter a universe of otherwise unmanageable data. Young white males are implicated in the current airlines plot and no doubt any future profiling exercise would include young white males in the profile. Attitude, demeanour, and contextual cues are also be used to refine a profile. This may well lead to attempts to recruit white octogenarian couples with Yorkshire accents as martyrs. If this happened then the profile would have to be changed accordingly. At the moment, most sensible people will despair when they see the old octogenarian Yorkshire couple having their shoes tested for traces of explosives.

Profiling has always, is & will always take place. I'm afraid it's a necessery evil.

What is different here is that it is now being publicly advertised as one of our governemts visible 'solutions' to appease fear.

Governemts globally use 'Problem; Reaction; Solution' policies to control their population. It is not unique to the West. I'd say these Islamic terrorists have adopted the same philosophy.

Ironically, this is now our version of democracy.

On a slight tangent, I do feel that British culture & inparticular our values, have been erroded by the influx of such large numbers of migrants (from all over). However the I'am sure the stealth Americanism of our country (food, entertainment & media) has also contributed.

OCCAM'S RAZOR & PROFILING

In profiling, Occam's principle should apply. That is "any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off", those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory." (Wikipedia) So instead of focussing on religion or colour, focus on what we *can* eliminate. How many active suicide bombers have ever been over 70? 75? (Age begets wisdom). None? (Apart from ex-terrorists, of course, like Arafat, Castro, Pinochet etc). So eliminate them to speed up the queue. For the rest, we can probably expect risk attached to anyone of any stripe under, say, 60. Of course, this would only apply until someone over 60 blew something up, but generally it's a young person's insanity, full of the rage, testosterone or whatever of youthful idiocy/idealism.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Reading the first 100 posts here, it's apparent that there's growing irritation among those who aren't aligned to a particular bias (usually PC, liberal but often Muslim or even right-wing) that this issue is being fudged by special pleading, claims of victimization, implicit mental censorship for fear of being labelled racist etc. etc. So full marks to Newsnight for at least airing the debates... above all, we need this conversation to continue.

Three Points:

One of the few people who talked any sense yesterday was Michael O'Leary. How can a case measuring 45x35x16cm be safer than one measuring 50x40x20cm? It's a nonsense.

By telling us all that an attack is imminent or highly likely the government has nothing to lose. If they are correct, and God forbid, there is an attack, then they can say they took all the necessary steps to protect us. If they are wrong then they can say they foiled another attack.

Des Brown rightly claimed on Today that it was wrong for terrorists to kill, or plan to kill, innocent people. So, how is it right for Olmert's puppet regime, and the Bush-Blair grand coalition in Iraq, to kill innocent people?

Profiling is the only way to catch the terrorists. Most of us could walk through the queues at Heathrow and know that certain people were not terrorists. For example, a party of little old ladies who have never travelled beyond Watford flying off on the holiday of a lifetime. Or a team of disabled sportspersons. Or a group of children on a school trip. Or Mr Blair. Or Mr Bush.

There has never been a terrorist attack on an El Al plane in the air. Why? Because profiling, the right sort of profiling, works. If it works for El Al it can work for BA.

In response to Alister (40)
You Moron, your suggestion just shows your level of ignorance, and you now use recent events to air your stupid xenophobia. A) Asians and Arabs are not black, and B) Of course the proposed profiling will just be an excuse to further humiliate blacks and any other minorities at airports, while giving an appearance of doing something and leaving air travellers no safer than they were in the first place. Of course as a black male, already the subject of numerous cases of profiling, that defy all statistics, I already know that I will be stopped and searched and questioned every time I travel, it already happens, and it has not made any of us any safer. Your xenophobia, allowed to fester in this climate does nothing but promote yet more resentment, which will only lead to the current narrow profile of a suicide bomber expanding yet wider to include all manner of disgruntled youth. Ignoring the fact that western greed, and thievery across the Middle East, Africa, Asia and South America is the cause of mass death and destruction on an unimaginable scale and has been, is and will continue to be a cause for resentment and will continue to lead the disturbed and those who feel they have nothing to lose among the disgruntled to take up arms to defend themselves. One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter! Lest we forget, the Nobel Laureate Gerry Adams, who was given offices in the House of Commons was once called a terrorist, and lest we forget so was Yasser Arafat, Mandela, and Jomo Kenyatta, to name but a few.

If profiling will be a useful tool in catching terrorists before they strike, and I believe the security services should make that decision, then it shouldn't be based on emotions. No doubt a committee of experts could generate useful target profiles based on any number of metrics, including religion, sex, ethnicity, etc. They should also keep the metrics secret, so terrorists cannot plan to circumvent them. Let's not follow the crazy US example of telling terrorists what our state of alert is on any day! For those who don't trust the security services with secret criteria, blame the politicians who have recklessly destroyed our trust by continuously lying and spinning to us.

For those who say Timothy McVeigh was white, we need to decide whether to base our profiles only on past terrorists targetting the UK, or to widen it out to past terrorists attacking other states too (which could lead to inappropriate profiles for our country). For those who say women have been used as unwitting bomb carriers, then throw it all into the mix and end up with some decent statistics - I'm sure women will come out as extremely low-risk, regardless. As others have already said, we're not going to completely eliminate false positives and negatives, but it should go a long way to reducing risk, based on the limited resources we have to defend ourselves.

It seems to me the UK has become an extremely weak country, unable to defend itself, and I think the same of other western European countries I have spent considerable time living in. We can't even defend our borders, there is dangerously destablising immigration occuring across Europe and I wonder if it's wrought intentionally by those with supra-national agendas. Ironically, I partly agree with Muslim Extremists on the single point that our society is increasingly corrupted. Over the past 20 years I've seen the England I love being rapidly destroyed before my eyes.

For those who oppose profiling, think yourselves lucky if you're merely the 'victim' of some extra searching whilst travelling through airports. If we ever suffer a terrorist nuke, or other WMD attack, then profiling will be the least of it!

Having been in London for the 7/7 bombings I have been rather embarrassed by the profiling already used by the Transport Police. I use the Tube most days and I have very rarely seen anyone White taken aside for questioning.

Statistically I am sure that profiling will catch more "terrorists" but I'm not sure that I want to live in a country where people are discriminated against merely due to their skin colour and facial hair.

To profile is to treat people unequally. Why have we created so much legislation to prevent discrimination in all areas of life only to negate it all because some extremists are "threatening our way of life"?

If we are trying to protect the British way of life with this sort of policy then the terrorists have already won.

Abdullah (196) wrote, "Please consider this, a terrorist like a Child Sex offender is a vilified member of our great british society, Most sex offenders are White, Males aged between 18-60. How would one meeting this profile feel when every time they approach a school, a cummunity centre ect. to be pulled aside for targeted security reasons."

Abdullah, this kind of profiling already occurs. Assuming your 'white, male 18-60' profile is correct, for the sake of argument, the reason white males 18-60 aren't routinely pulled aside for security checks in these situations is because sufficient measures are already in place; e.g. a parent, carer or teacher not letting a child out of their sight, and moving kids out of the proximity of someone who looks suspicious. If sex offenders had the habit of kidnapping kids in the presence of parents, carers, teachers, etc., then no doubt further security measures would be applied. As a white male I have often crossed the road during the evening to walk on the other side, when approaching a lone female, as many times there is visible discomfort on their part if I walk towards them - no doubt I fit their profile of potential attacker, regardless of smart appearance, walking to one side of the path, looking away, etc.

There is an old saying that if it quacks like a duck, and it walks like a duck - it is more likely than not, a duck. This philosophy has served the human race for a long time. So, what else is profiling but looking for the appropriate duck?

Ian...at or around #24

ducks are unable to affect different noises, similarly they are incapable of dressing up as chickens or whatever, so another animal analogy falls apart

[race] profiling is, to repeat myself, moronic, those who shout "profile, profile now" will feel safe, until the terrorists turn profiling against itself

by the way, (to pre-empt any such accusation) i do not consider myself 'liberal', i am even more dangerous to the 'mosley set' than that, i consider myself to be a realist

there are far more species of animal than simplistic polarising arguements accept, and their squeaks, quacks or otherwise are innadequately reported, however, my suspicion is that if you could hear every bark, quack and hoot in unison, you may discern the following noise "war is terror as much as terrorism itself, we wish peace, we hope for a strong and peaceful britain, but not a falsy strong one based on neo-fascism"

The recent book 'the end of faith' by sam harris, opens with a scenario.
A young man gets on a bus.
It is half empty.
Next to him a middle aged couple look at catalogues and discuss which fridge they are about to buy.
He waits.
At the next stop the bus fills up.
He detonates his belt of explosives packed with nuts and bolts.
Harris points out that from his telling, we know nothing of the bomber's education, health, wealth, nationality, colour, happiness, self-esteem or just about anything, including even the continent in which the bombing takes place.
Why then, he asks, would you bet the farm that you can guess his religion. ETA, the IRA and the ANC have diversified out of the terror business so that, as neo-con Ann Coulter points out, 'Are most muslims terrorists? Of course not. Are most terrorists muslims? Sure they are.'
That's why profiling works.
If the searched are to be chosen randomly, a 25yo South Asian muslim can be let through so that my 71yo mother in law who flew out of Stansted yesterday, can be thoroughly checked to ensure she is not from the Revolutionary SAGA Army.

Hi, Robert 181 and others
Sorry to be so long, but its been one of those days. The tiger was used to illustrate a single tiny point - it won't work if we try applying it to all humans and all problems - we are all far too complex. The more I blog, and the more I see how people argue subjectively with total disregard to the bigger picture, the more I begin to sympathise with Editors (and so I aplogise for all the times I have doubted their parentage).
The subject here is profiling, but it is not the only tool in the box and other tools take care of more subtle matters. Back to profiling.
As humans, we conduct our lives by quick impression and discrimination - big from small, short from fat, black from white, up from down and so on. It allows us to make quick, continuous decisions about our mental, physical and social environments (that are really infinitly complex) and so acts like a simple compass by which we steer our way. This rough process is called common sense and it is almost the very opposite of careful academic reflection and analysis, the type you display so admirably.
Terror is random violence (from the passenger's POV) and so random discipline (spot checks, profiling) counteracts it. It is a very blunt, simplistic instrument, but it's presence is what is important. It looks like a common sense counter to terrorism and that is all it sets out to achieve - at the common sense level. Academically, and considered as the only and exclusive answer to the problem, there are a million reasons why it doesn't work, but that's not the point - to the travelling public, it looks like it does. It reassures their common sense.
If you don't profile, you allow the terrorist to use his preferred group to carry out his work and you make his life easier. Those who moan that they are victims of profiling are, in fact, the victims of terrorists within their group. If the terrorists weren't there, there would be no profiling.

Of course there should be profiling, but it must not be left to busy airline staff who can only use skin colour, appearance, or general demeanour, to decide whether to stop and search an individual. Professionally trained and dedicated staff with access to unbelievably vast and penetrative data sources, coupled to enormous computing power, give us unprecedented ability to monitor the background and movements of every single passenger or potential traveler - and we should not be afraid to use it. Singaporean authorities do with great success. Use it, and (unlike Singapore) set up the necessary institutions to carefully monitor how it is used. Much better to do that rather than be beholden to inevitable prejudice, “gut feel�, and other varieties of unreliable, offensive, and potentially counter-productive methods of profiling.

Very interesting discussion indeed! Can't really add much to it but to note that in the 1930's when the Nazis came to power, they too carried out a kind of profiling - eugenics, I think, was the "science" that underwrote the Nazi 'profiling' policy...you know...the 'hooked nose', the 'long sidelocks', the 'flowing caftans'...the peculiar body odour...etc...etc...led to a designation that carried with it ...well you know the rest!

Let me be careful here - this is not to say that what is being discussed, or for that matter, proposed is even remotely connected to the Nazi program...but then again...not many in the 1930's would have thought that the Nazi policy would lead to the ovens!

Profiling is inherently dangerous...for all sorts of reasons as the posts above suggest...but then again, NOT profiling carries dangers with it too...!

So, we are now faced with an immediate connundrum! Oh...and did I forget to extend a welcome to one an all...to the Age of Post-Modern Warfare?

Hi, Special K (220)
When the individuals you named were called terrorists, they were terrorists. Terrorists are people who apply military violence to civilians as a policy, often avoiding the military because they are scared to for obvious reasons. Ex President Mandela's ANC, for example, did not engage the South African military and he, Madiba, went to Robben Island as a criminal because of it. In law, you cannot claim to be a political prisoner if you target and kill civilians on purpose, but in PR (and blogging) you can.
Fighters who attack the military with surprise and hit-and-run methods are called guerillas.
People get Peace gongs for turning FROM terrorism TO democratic methods, not simply because they were former terrorists.

OLIVER RIX @169

Like Qpline @170 I really don’t get your point. I've even read my own earlier entry & your later ones but I still don’t get your point!

I suspect you don’t get mine either. There are too many people who use Asian and Muslim as interchangeable words. Their not. To base any part of an anti-terrorism strategy on such a basic misconception is ineffectual.

It also hacks off the many non Muslim Asians, of which there are many. Not because we are anti Muslim but because we have our own very separate identities. Islam was born out of Judaism and Christianity, and therefore has a lot more in common with Western religions/sects than eastern ones.

OLIVER RIX @169

Like Qpline @170 I really don’t get your point. I've even read my own earlier entry & your later ones but I still don’t get your point!

I suspect you don’t get mine either. There are too many people who use Asian and Muslim as interchangeable words. Their not. To base any part of an anti-terrorism strategy on such a basic misconception is ineffectual.

It also hacks off the many non Muslim Asians, of which there are many. Not because we are anti Muslim but because we have our own very separate identities. Islam was born out of Judaism and Christianity, and therefore has a lot more in common with Western religions/sects than eastern ones.

The spokeswoman from the US made a fair point in her scenario- that we wouldn't be looking for suspects in the Muslim community after a mosque in the UK has been torched. Therefore, it is only right to target all male North Africans, Arabian and South Asian men for more detailed security screenings to avoid any future attacks. All other passengers, should have the routine security checks as necessary. This is a small price to pay for the good of our personal safety and is not detrimental to any minority ethnic groups. All British citizens including Muslim community groups must understand that this is a crucial aspect as the last line of defence to avoid any adverse events in air travel. The key question to ask is why should anyone be afraid of being targeted for more searches and scrutiny, unless they have anything to hide? I totally agree with targeting specific groups for more detailed searches, whilst also not forgetting to carry out necessary searches for the rest of the travelling public through our airports.

priya @232: nicely put!

Anne @ 210

Is being a Christian like being pregnant? (My Christian brother-in-law doesn't think so.)

I'm a Hindu and it's nothing like being pregnant, atleast, so my mother tells me.

Hey! Maybe anyone disparately trying for a baby should convert to Islam!!
“CURE TO INFERTILITY FOUND ON NEWSNIGHT CHATROOM!!�

Profiling is the most logical policy to adopt. As long as there are limited resources, i.e. we are unable to search every person who enters an airport, then those searches that are conducted need to be as efficient as possible.

We are reacting to a particular threat and we should not be blinded by foolish accusations of injustice. The current threat is from Islamist extremists and it is no injustice to profile the characteristics that are proven to apply to such individuals.

Profiling in no way pre-supposes the guilt of those that match the profile. Using such a method will inevitably result in innocent individuals being searched, but aren't innocent individuals searched anyway?

Let's not focus on the innocent, let's focus on the evil that threatens the innocent.

As usual a really good laugh reading many of the entries here. And as usual, there seems to be many high level security management experts writing in. Along with the guys who try to turn simple, prudent and in the case of profiling - well tried and tested procedures into something more sinister. Nick Griffin the BNP Chairman made a typically over the top and reactionary statement to the effect that all muslim males between the ages of 15 and 50 should be banned from airtravel. Like most people I should imagine, I disregarded the statement as I do most of the BNP stuff. However, if 9 aircraft had fell out of the sky recently with 3 - 4 thousand dead, just how exreme would this particular view sound then? Yes, of course some of the characters that write in wouldn't change their deluded views even if the capital was nuked by islamic terrorists. it would still be all our own fault etc... The reality is though, that the majority of the public would in fact suddenly and understandably find Griffins idea a lot less radical. This is a great danger and it is being caused by the idiots who take political correctness to ridiculous extremes. Profiling works and is the lesser of many evils. The Chief Superintendent on the programme is a typical new cop who has carved his career in a service that worships PC. He is not a Policeman in the true sense of the word. He is concerned about the backlash of disgruntled muslims who object to profiling at airports, arrests and the occasional Police mistake etc. We should be more concerned as a nation about provoking a backlash from the pedominently white, christian population who number in excess of 55 million. If this situation continues over the comming years, decades etc, this will be the danger. The muslim community is frustrated we keep hearing, but so is the rest of the community. And the likelyhood of such a backlash will grow with a decline in the economy, job losses, further terror attacks by Muslims supposedly justified by our foreign policy etc. There is a lot of cowardice amongst our politicians and some in the media. Future generations, including Muslims, will not thank them for this as it is they who will have to mop up the mess. Even supposing we changed out foreign policy tomorrow - what about the muslim exremists who are more concerned with taking over democratic western nations like our own? Oh yes, there are many who have this as a goal. Get real those people who think that this is only about the injustices which do exist in palestine etc. The fragmented nature of the Islamic terrorist network means that there are many different groups and frankly crazy aims. The country will have to wake up to this sooner or later and the whole PC approach will die a death through necessity. Wait and see. And for info, I know the middle east well, the UAE and other arabic countries. I've worked out there and travelled recreationally. It's this and my professional background that happens to be relevant to anti terrorism, transport security and plannig that enables me to crack up laughing at the guff that comes from some of you geaky dizzy civys who've done Jack and largely been nowhere. And a word back to Abdul - 84. An often overlooked fact - the IRA came to the table partially as a result of major successes by the security forces in the mid/late 80's. They were extensively infiltrated and weakened by intelligence agents and suffered major losses at places such as Loughall, where two entire ASU's were wiped out, to name but one. Interestingly, these successes only came about once there was the politicall will to let the SAS, the Det and E4 do the job. And for the record - British military might has not been fully used for decades, especially in NI. Check out rules of engagement...they'e the sort of restrictions that many of the worlds armies, let alone terrorists, do not have.

Aren’t there victims of the July 7th bombing who are British Asians? Surely more searching (and profiling if it turns out to work better in reality) will benefit all ethnic groups in this country. I don’t see why anyone should have a problem with it.

Secondly, with the standstill at Heathrow airport and the nation’s security level set at ‘severe’, it seems to me that the current method to fight terrorism is not working. We should be willing to try out new ways that have the potential to make us all safer, and not make harsh judgments of the political correctness kind before the method has even had its trial-run.

I got a chain email this morning, which I'm supposed to pass on to twenty people. I can't be arsed with that, but I thought you might appreciate it:

If you are ready for the adventure of a lifetime, TRY THIS:

Enter Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi, Nigeria, etc illegally. Never mind immigration Quotas, visas, international law, or any of that nonsense.

Once there, demand that the local government provide free medical care for you and your entire family.

Demand bilingual nurses and doctors. Demand free bilingual local government forms, bulletins, etc. Procreate abundantly.

Deflect any criticism of this allegedly irresponsible reproductive behaviour with, "It is a cultural thing; you wouldn't understand."

Keep your British identity strong.

Fly the your national flag from your rooftop, or proudly display it in your front window, or on your car bumper.

Speak only English at home and in public, and insist that your children do likewise.

Demand classes on English culture in the Muslim school System.

Demand a local country driver license. This will afford other legal rights and will go far to legitimise your unauthorised, illegal, presence in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iraq.

Drive around with no liability insurance and ignore local traffic Laws.

Insist that local country law enforcement teaches English to all its Officers.

Organise protest marches against your host country, inciting violence against non-Brits, non-Christians, and the government that let you in.

Good luck! You'll soon be dead.

Because it will never happen in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iraq or any other country in the world except right here in the UK. For we are run by soft, politically correct politicians, that are too scared to "offend" anyone.

If you agree, pass it on.

If you don't, go ahead and try the above in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Iraq.

Re: 234 (John Tran): What was that 'profile' that 196 (Abdullah) referred to and 223 (Andy) responded to about child sex offenders? Like Andy, if we assume that that profile is correct, then would you have a problem if, on a visit to any non-caucasian country, ALL caucasian males fitting that profile were 'assessed'?

Honest now!

I was under the impression that profiling (effective or otherwise), is a form of investigation. This would make the subjects of profiling subjects of an investigation, the act, substance and object of which is to sort out the non-guilty from the guilty. It is therefore self-evident that those under investigation, during investigation, cannot yet be guilty because the establishment of their guilt or innocence comes only at the end of the investigation.
Now I would have thought that an Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police would have picked up the idea of "innocent until proven guilty" by now, and that this simple concept might suggest that a person is innocent right up until a proven criminal act is uncovered.
Claiming that the presumed-innocent-until-proven-guilty subjects of an investigation are guilty of a crime, merely by being investigated, seems to conflict ever so slightly with all coppers' number one rule.
Unless, of course, you have a political agenda that you place above reality, in which case, there are more than a few bloggers around here admirably qualified for a Senior Police position.

A policy of profiling based on race or religion would be both ineffective, and disastrous for race relations. I (as a white male) would *much* rather spend a little more time in airport security checks, than to live in a country with a policy of treating "people who look like Muslims" differently. And of course the terrorists would quickly adapt.

Notwithstanding the usual crowd of racists that have jumped on the bandwagon, I think Barry van Danzig (122) has hit the nail on the head about why this policy is being suggested now -- it is about the airlines and airports trying to avoid extra security costs. British airports have had woefully inadequate security for years, and after the predictable chaos prompted by suddenly introducing hand baggage checks with a few hours notice, the airlines and the BAA have got spooked by the prospect of having to pay for effective security measures applied to all passengers.

We can all only become less safe by allowing some necessary security measures to be skipped for white passengers.

I agree with JEM #238 which my previous entry testifies too, apart from one statement which reads "Predominately white, Christian population who number in excess of 55 million". I think the statement should read "Predominately white, Agnostic population.......", which essentially makes the situation even worse, as Agonsticism isn't an ancient or medievel tradition that justifies exemption from the liberal and cultural concepts, and political conduct of a nation.

If we are heading towards a totally multicultural society, then we need a radical shake up of our political system, as every culture, majority or minority, needs to be represented.
Because of the cultural change this country has gone through in the last 50+ years, the government has now become a secular body, catering for the rights of generic man and not for a single state identity, but the social group of the old single state identity still exists, and as I see more then one body or council representing minority social groups then I feel as though I should have a representing counsil that acts on my behalf when issues arise that step out of the secular political arena, such as my right to feel equally offended.

Speaking as an agnostic my beliefs will probably offend the religous community, as I believe all the Gods present in the world today are no more then mythical beings, who have no more of a reality then Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy, and after having taken this country over a thousand years to separate monarchy and religion from the political arena, I would hate to think that someone who's dominating factor of a decision in a political situation lies in the belief that a mythical being said so, because as I said before, to me that mythical being is no more real then Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy, and because of our liberal society, people have the right to believe in Father Christmas, and show a religious piety towards him, and have they identity recognised, but to me he's just a fictious fat bloke in a red suit, and although religion hasnt yet fully crept back into British politics, Father Christmas should be kept out of the secular political arena

If these comparisons have offended the religious community then I am equally offended that I cannot believe what I believe without causing offence, as all religious doctrines alienate and offend some social group, and in the majority of cases its ironically, other religious communities. Also, if I'm wrong, which is probably central to the agnostic belief, because we take ALL the evidence given to us and come up with the conclusion that that it looks highly unlikely that God exists, but accept the fact that its impossible to know for certain, I'm not too keen on the idea that a religious person will probably believe that my soul will burn in hell come judgement day for believing this, and not believing what they believe, for someones soul to burn in hell is a phrase usually reserved for the rapists, murderers and paedophiles of this world, does this mean I'm compared to all of the above by a religious mind?

Hi, J (244)
J, when I die, I don't want to go to Heaven because, if I go to Heaven, I will never see you again!
The old ones are the best ones...but your welcome presence makes a point. I COULD blame you for all this terrorism - clearly, you are a self-confessed unbeliever and therefore a bomb-magnet in a jihad. However, I choose to defend your right to believe or otherwise. Profiling seeks to discover those who think otherwise.

There are lots of good points about how you can't tell a persons' religion based on their skin colour - maybe if we required people to publically state their religion, perhaps with some kind of a symbol that could be sewen on to their clothing or pinned to their front door then it would make profiling a lot easier.

I do love the way people keep repeating that profiling "doesn't work". But the fact is that profiling is used in every single criminal investigation by every single functioning police force in the world. It is one of the most basic aspects of police work- you build up a profile of your suspect, and concentrate your investigation on people who fit that profile.

So when people say that profiling "doesn't work", they are talking absolute rot, because it does work, which is why every police force in the world uses it.

In response to John (240) above, as well as to John Nash, both of whom display your amazing abilities to conveniently ignore your contributions to your problems by sounding seemingly rational in endless debate to suggest some sort of rational moderation while you ignore your aggression and continue to benefit from it. John (240) suggests going to Nigeria, Pakistan or Afghanistan and arrogantly trying to impose your own culture! You already have! I guess I need to remind you of the ugliness that was colonialism, and that is neo-colonialism (third world debt [already repaid tenfold {for every £1 flowing to the 'third world' there is £11 that flows to the west from the 'third world']}), slavery, apartheid, numerous assassinations!! The sheer amnesiac nerve of suggesting that you Brits merely keep yourselves to yourselves, minding your own business in your own little island. You have gone all over the world imposing your language, culture and taken the best of everything from all of the places you name above and plenty more, and you obviously don't like it when others do a mere mini-fraction of the same to yourselves. England has lived on the spoils of colonialism for centuries and continues to do so, while also importing both cheap and skilled labour to perform the jobs you either don't want to or can't perform. The other John conveniently seeks to somehow break down the point about when and how former terrorists became Nobel Laureates or celebrated leaders - the point is dear Johns, that the so-called terrorists were merely soldiers for their people fighting the injustices that you subject other people to. But ofcourse we need to ignore those injustices and focus on peaceful democratic means while you continue to rape and pillage our lands and even steal those every lands. All very convenient to you. Racial profiling already exists, and it happens despite all statistics, which do not justify it. For example black males continue to be the victims of the most stop-and-searches and these have increased since 7/7, at a higher rate than they have increased for stop and searches even for those very same young Asian men you now claim to fear. Further more, the highest number of minorities in British Jails after whites is Chinese males, which would suggest that Chinese males should be the ethnicity most targeted for stop-and-search, but this is not so. So, like I said before, profiling is just one more excuse to exercise British xenophobia, and will not make any of us any safer. Furthermore, it already happens, and it has not reduced any sort of crime anywhere. However, in true British style, we can talk about it until we all turn blue, your feudal government will do as it will as is always the case.

yes, we surely all realise that profiling IS ALREADY a reality, but the notion that it "does work" is clearly misplaced, the specific point here is that in essence it WILL NOT work, because profiling appears to have ignored the womanising, boozing antics of the 'pilots' trained in the u.s. in the art of steering, but not landing aircraft

the poor guy DeMenezez, was shot thsnks to profiling

the terorists will enjoy profiling as it feeds into their description of british society as 'anti-islamic'

and, as already demonstrated, change their appearance and activities

a useful analogy for profiling might be speed cameras

when i started driving in 1992, there were enough road cops to make everyone behave, now, with speed cameras predominant, and far less evidence of visible road policing (replaced with spooky vans at the side of the road and blokes hiding in hedgerows), i see insane road bullying and aggression on an almost daily basis, those who would previously been cowed by the thought of the blue light in the rear view mirror, nowadays have radar detection, and the knowledge that speed cameras will rarely detect their shenanigens

the speed camera attempts to 'profile' the dangerous driver as simply one whose speed is excessive, missing all the other dangerous activities in the process, similarly, a safe, responsible driver is 'pulled up' by the blunt tool of the speed camera [profile] and is fined and penalised for exceeding a speed limit when any reasonable person might appreciate the harmlessness of the particular 'crime' in the specific situation

profiling, like the speed camera, gives the appearance of justice, whilst only actually providing it by chance

finally, even if i genuinely thought that profiling would be effective (which i do not), i would feel compelled to argue against it as we have struggled of late, to shake off the inherent injustices of racism, colour profiling et all, the more the government involves itself in such activities as colour profiling, the more it seems that race is a government backed source of tension, that in turn filters down through all sectors of society, which in turn normalises race descrimination and tension 'on the ground'

i live 'on the ground', and despite my friendships with anyone of any colour who is a decent person (most of the people i have ever met), i have seen and experienced the nasty end of the race wedge

we can and must think more highly when it comes to delays and safety, one rule for all by race, and in order to encourage rather than diminish solidarity within our society, i say just 'profile out' the mothers with children, and the older members of the traveling public, if any must be filtered out (still giving rise to some risk) let it be they, and they alone

if this is to be one society, it must live under one rule for all

Hi, Graeme (246)
I admire your scrolling stamina to appear at 246, and your ominous inference is not missed. However, like many other blogs here, it misses the point and is answered very simply.

The profilers are well aware that you can't find a Muslim unless he or she chooses to act like a Muslim, but they don't care because they are not looking for Muslims. They are looking for terrorists.

They are profiling, say, young Asian males because the largest proportion of terrorists identified to date has turned out to be this profile. If later investigations reveals that the greatest proportion of terrorists are one-legged Peruvian flute-players, the profile will change accordingly.

Hi, Special K (248)
I have noted your blog...I was waiting for others to have their say before replying, but everyone else seems to have have extracted sufficient therapeutic benefit or have gone off chasing the new topics, and the Newsnight conveyor-belt has it's job to do and has had to go on down the road, too.
There cannot be a British person alive who can deny we have done some pretty dodgy things in the past and I'm amazed that you didn't mention slavery. However, they were done at the time for whatever reason people had at the time and we can't really judge them effectively by today's standards. Things like slavery were considered "normal" in their times and righly considered wrong today. But you cannot use long past events to justify other wrongs committed today - today we should all know better.
I, like most Britons, have no wish to impose my culture on anyone - if the world, for example, finds English a convenient lingua franca of the Internet, it is fortunate for me because I speak the language - but the point is that I didn't force it on anyone.
Third world debt is a emotive issue, but a lot of it has to be laid at the door of those countries whose leaders seem to have a perennial habit of trousering loans and beetling off to Switzerland, leaving their people with no benefits and all the repayments. If a bank lends my wife and I a thousand pounds, which I then spend on booze and drink myself into the grave, leaving her to pay off the debt, you can hardly blame the bank.
Apartheid, among other things, was not forced on to Africa by the West -it was an indigenous system introduced by white Africans that the West eventually helped to destroy. We can all point fingers - what has happened to the San in Botswana under black rule, for example? Is Zimbabwe a Utopia?
You may consider the terrorists mentioned to be soldiers, but soldiers are employed to fight other soldiers - fighters who fight defenceless civilians on purpose are terrorists. Who they are fighting for is irrelevant. Perhaps you would like to expand on all the rape and pillage "we" are presently engaged in, citing present examples.
You should keep up your neo-colonialist tirade while you can - China is now investing heavily in Africa and will want to see a return on that investment, leaving your "west" accusation a little thin. I spent twenty years in and around Southern Africa and my sympathies are with ordinary African people. They suffered under tribalism, they suffered under black expansion, the suffered under colonialisation, they suffered under apartheid and now a lot of them are suffering under "Rainbow Nationhood", giving rise to the rather grim joke among poor black people that there isn't any black in a rainbow.
In Britain, young black males are subject to proportionally more stop and search because they figure most highly in the crimes that stop and search is aimed at, not because of prison statistics.
We can go on and on, with you profiling me as someone with a pathological hatred or contempt for whoever it is you are choosing to defend, and me shaking my head sadly.
The truth is that you are negatively laying off the problems in the world onto me because its easier to cry "Victim" than to address the real problems more positively. Which is precisely what's going on in this profiling debate.

Hi Jim @180
In answer to your question:- it tells me there is war. The same kind that many regions of the world including the UK have experienced. WW1 and WW2 saw several million christians killed by other christians. The only difference being that both our WWs in Europe werent provoked and encouraged by Muslim Allied Armies, whilst the present ones in Iraq, Afghanistan or recently Lebanon are either instigated/brought on/encouraged or supported by our own Axis of evil namely US&UK governments.
Now as far as profiling is concerned, surely it's at TUBE stations that it should be in place, wasn't it there that an ACTUAL terrorist attack fitting the profile, took place 1 year ago!!!!
like one blogger said earlier,its the flights to the US that should be profiled 1st not a certain group of people on every flight. And by the way i believe no bomb has yet been found on any plane leaving the UK and since the 24 suspected people arrested haven't been charged means that the police hasn't found any strong evidence yet...in fact they have asked for more time to "gather evidence"...surely, to frighten everybody and mess up many people's holidays in such a dramatic way you would think they wd have some strong evidence to prove their claim of an "imminent threat level" , but now, a week on! and no such thing as a bomb ready to cause "mass murder" has been found on any plane. Wake up everyone don't let yourself give way to state controlled paranoia! Wise up to the fact that it's not the alleged muslim terrorists that want to change our way of life (unless one considers that our way of life consists ONLY of invading Muslim countries and waging war therin), instead its our current governent which is actively changing our way of life and restricting our hard earned civil liberties. And guess what! the govnmt will tell you its to avoid terrorism. Question: how does a compulsory plastic ID card (latest expensive gvnt blow on civil liberties)protect you from a would be home grown British Muslim terrorist called John Smith?....
History and the present day show us that to have more unconditional control and consequently support from their people, politicians will use various means and the most efficient 1 is scaremongering based on exagerated or fabricated overexposed threat emanating from a particular group of people and the claim that they are doing everything possible to protect you from it by subjecting such group to profiling and other means of segregation. As a proof of this scaremongering policy happening today and many submitting to it, look up the words used by the Police spokesman 1 week ago:-" murder on an unimaginable scale!" Also look at the way a whole community is in the spotlight and accused of various bad deeds and negatively referred to, i quote " denial", "foolish and dangerous"(the letter by Muslim MPs to the PM), and here, in this very thread re. Police Spdt A. Desai " disgrace to his uniform", Richard & Judy Show last week re. the Muslim community "5th column" "there's an elephant in the room"
I take it that the police (may) have foiled a plot to blow up planes, but surely that a police rep. (whom to this day! has no hard evidence of an imminent threat back then) fancies scaring us further by having us to imagine (in case we have no imagination!) what it wd be like if there were bombs goes to prove the point.

Dear John, yes, I did in fact mention slavery too, you missed it, as you so conveniently miss so many points. Current examples of pillaging include unfair trade, and yes third world debt. I did my dissertation on the subject and one of the authors I used for the research, did their research on South America, where they found that between 1973 and the early 80s out of approximately $300 billion in so called aid to that region, only about $30 billion actually made it there for use on projects. It was less than $10 billion that was siphoned off to Swiss banks by corrupt leaders, the majority of it remained in western banks, as interest payments, fees to experts, admin charges and all other manner of legal charges, but the region still had no choice but to accept these loans, even though only minimal amounts made it to them. This continues today. I would like to see what the US would do to Switzerland if huge sums of US public funds made their way to private Swiss bank accounts, and the Swiss govt refused to part with them, but of course that would never happen. You westerners protect each other. Prime example is reparations to the tune of billions paid to Jews. To date the issue of reparations to people of African descent in America is treated as an insanity. Black people "need to just move on and stop living in the past" is a popular line isn't it. Jews need to never forget, and of course we should never forget September 11th, or 7/7. There are no diamonds or gold, platinum coffee, tea, cocoa or any of those valuable raw materials, of which the west is the biggest consumer, found anywhere in the west, and yet, the west is the sole beneficiary of the sale of these materials. This is mostly due to contracts signed by colonial governors during colonialism, and no sovereign country dare overturn any of these treaties single handed, for an attack from the U.S and allies would be certain. case in point, the middle east - you are only there for oil - human rights has nothing to do with it. If human rights were an issue, the west would be in Sudan and the Congo, where "mass murder on an unimaginable scale" continues without a mention on western headlines. Victim mentality? Not at all. While it is true the third world is a victim of western cunning and thievery, I believe that the solution can and will only ever come from the third world itself, when enough people in the third world become educated about the truths of their problems, and support the united efforts of the third world to break unfair trade treaties, and begin trading on their own terms, and selling their own goods. Until that day, the west will continue to benefit from the instability that exists in the developing world, and engineer instability to push that day further and further away. I can already see your email asking for proof of western engineering of conflict. We only need look back at action taken by the CIA, France, and the UK in murders such as of Patrice Lumumba, the weakening of the Ghanaian economy to destabilise Ghana, in order to oust Nkrumah, a CIA sponsored coup attempt on Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe are other examples, and Zimbabwe's problems are magnified by western sanctions again, due to Zimbabwe getting fed up of 1% of foreigners owning 90% of the countries wealth. The weakening of the Iraqi economy, which has cost millions of lives since the Iraq policy was started in the late 80s, in order to destabilise Iraq, to justify its invasion all these years later. Before US sanctions Iraq, was a thriving economy, with on of the most highly educated populations that has now been returned to the near Stone Age, by Western policy. Saddam is in court for the deaths of 148 Iraqis. Who will try Bush sr, Clinton, Bush Jr, Major, Thatcher and Blair for the other millions of Iraqi deaths, not to mention thousands of allied servicemen and women? Racism in the west continues to affect us minorities, with our skills and energies being exploited to the maximum, for minimum returns. Minorities from prestigious universities languish on the unemployment books unless they settle for low paid, unskilled unchallenging jobs in the public sector or in the care services, while businesses import labour from New Zealand, Australia and from among South Africa's whites, because British xenophobia is such that you would rather give work permits to these foreign nationals and keep unemployment high rather than employ ready, willing and able young blacks and other minorities. This I see all around me in the City where I work! I can already see you asking how come I work in the City if this is the case, but it has been, is and continues to be a struggle and a battle of wits!

Dear Newsnight
sort your site out! wasted 45 mins writing considered response to debate on profiling, only to be told it's submission had failed due to offensive content of some bloggs.No facility to resend.Also page very shaky when at the bottom bit where the response windows are contained.Its most frustrating and annoying to be asked to contribute and to be thwarted, because not enough care has been put into the site construction.

Profiling has been used on airlines for a number of years now. Profiles change according to the threat.
Is it racist? No, because everyone is subject to the particular profile. If the particular threat is likely to involve a particular gender, or racial type then it is both natural and sensible to scrutinise them more closely. Only those matching the particular profile get more attention. So I as an anglo saxon protestant traveller to Lahore would be just as likely to be chosen if there was a threat issued by an organisation predominantly peopled by my sort against an airline, say Pakistan International.
Racism surely is defined as a means to denegrate and devalue individuals or groups to "my" advantage. Profiling is designed to prevent everyone, regardless of race, colour or creed on a 'plane from being murdered.

Do I want profiling to continue? Take a guess

Hi, Special K (253)
Do you really want me to answer all your cherished hatreds? White slave dealers bought their slaves off black slave dealers - if the black slave dealers had the technology to shift their slaves to the Caribbean, they would have done so. There is a chain of supply and demand, and we all have bits of it.
Unfair trade at market prices is only unfair if you think it is. Quadruple the price of tea, for example, and every farmer who can will start growing tea, especially those farmers with the capital to automate and a desire to use modern production methods on a vast scale... Your poor, underpaid, exploited small scale farmers will become unemployed farmers. An English quarryman gets the market price for his stone that bears no resemblance to the price of a granite worktop in a posh shop. So?
I live in an area of Britain that has lots of grant systems for suitable projects - guess what? Only a tiny bit of it ends up spent on projects at the sharp end - the rest goes on all the fat in the system. What makes you think it is a first world/third world thing? Likewise interest on debts. Lenders everywhere want suitable controls and interest on their loans - it is universal.
Compensation paid to Jews was paid for proveable Nazi theft, and a damn small payment it was. Jews are still fighting to prise their stolen money out of Switzerland.
Vast amounts of US public money IS siphoned off to Switzerland. What planet do you live on?
You list a number of commodities, many of which are found in the west, all of which are exploited where they are found and it is worth exploiting them. All commodities gain value as the pass along the supply chain, except in North Korea and Cuba, where most of the commodities go the the boss (who is not necessarily white).
China and India are now huge buyers of raw materials, and their consumption is growing. They also pay market prices for raw materials that sell for higher prices after they fiddle about with them and make other things. It's universal. Your argument is coming unglued, day by day because it is based on anti-west jealousy and political inversion that stem from your victim complex. Africans are not poor because of the West - they have always been poor, generally speaking, and particularly if you mean poor in monetary terms - many still live without money, by barter. Where black people have gained independence, far too often it has resulted in black exploitation of black people. Exploitation is not just a "West" thing. Black people spread from Central Africa centuries ago and bumped off the brown people they found in the South. It's what people do.
The West is a big consumer, yes, but Africa, for example, was never a big consumer - what's your point? Is it a crime to be a consumer? If you have no consumers, you have no trade.
Zimbabwe's "foreigners" did own a lot of the land, and when they did, it was a major food supplier in the region. The important thing is that they were good farmers, not white. Now they have been replaced by black people and the country is a basket case, and the reason is obvious - having black skin does not confer farming ability. If the farmers' whiteness (or "foreign-ness", as you put it, although many were white Africans) is more important to you than their farming ability, the result is demonstrable and you are a racist idiot, throwing it all away. It is strange that when the white farmers were working the land, they didn't run around moaning about "exploitation" when they received the very same market prices for their produce. Your argument falls on its botty yet again. The truth is that much of the land was unproductive scrub before the farmers improved it, and it has returned to unproductive scrub since they left. Now that black people own their unproductive scrub again, you do nothing but moan and blame Western sanctions. When the West applied sanctions to South Africa, the place went from strength to strength in terms of self-sufficiency. What of your argument now?
Your claims for Iraq seem to have overlooked the trenches full of skeletond now being found - perhaps they were under the ground sheltering from Westernn unfairness, I suppose? Most of the deaths in Iraq today are caused by Iraqis, and they are caused by Iraqis who, like you, don't like the West. There's a bit of pot and kettle in your argument here, too..
Let's look at your argument about "us" wanting to keep "minority" people unemployed. "We" (I presume you mean white people but haven't the guts to say it) are supposed to be purposefully keeping zillions of black people in unemployment where "we" have to pay them benefits, rather than see them in employment and thus comntributing their taxes to "our" comfort? I take it that your degree wasn't in mathematics.
I spent many years on the dole myself, but at least I am prepared to admit that I was an argumentative and cocky little bastard so no-one would employ me. I suggest that you look in the mirror. There are millions of "other-than-white" immigrants working in this country. Why would "we" bring them in to keep "you" unemployed? You're probably unemployed because you are ready, willing and offensive, with a chip on your shoulder the size of Everest that makes it kind of obvious. Reading your arguments, I can imagine that any employer (of and colour) would welcome you like they would welcome a visitation of boils. Employers want people who will fit in and become productive team players, so your continual references to "you" and "us" makes you unemployable, quite apart that you are likely to spend your whole day, on company pay, doing nothing but complain that you are being exploited.
Get off your bigoted arse, set up your own company and make your own employent. Thousands of people of Indian descent came here penniless from Uganda not that long ago and are now millionaires.
I lived in South Africa during apartheid with a number of black friends and business partners.
Talk about profiling.....good God...

Dear Bill (255) as a white protestant Anglo Saxon male, you are a threat to most of the planet, the majority of the world's population, as well as the environment. As such you should be stopped and searched at every single opportunity! Oh and btw, Dear John, you claim that blacks are the subject of profiling because they (we) are the perpetrators of the crimes for which stop and searches are conducted, a) as a very small minority in the UK, blacks are not responsible for a majority of any one single crime, and that includes gun and knife crimes, contrary to popular belief. The majority of blacks incarcerated in British jails, are for possession of marijuana, a now downgraded drug, and the only reason for high levels of incarceration is not because as you might conveniently think, we are the highest consumers of the substance, but rather specifically because of profiling. If whites were stopped and searched, as much as blacks are, there would be many more drug offences recorded, which of course doesn't mean that there would be higher levels of incarceration for white youth, because of course, conviction again is subjective, and here race bias exists as well, but if justice was applied in the same way to all without regard to race, either there would e far fewer blacks in jail for ridiculous possession offences, or there would be far higher levels of incarceration for whites for ridiculous possession offences. None of this has made the British public any safer, because all this diverts useful resources, is overcrowding prisons unnecessarily, and allows lazy police officers to get away with pumping up their arrest figures by targeting soft targets, while real crime goes unpunished, un-investigated and unsolved. Again, profiling will not make any of us safer, it is just one more way to be racist and xenophobic, as the current hysteria is already showing, with the farce at the airports in Boston and Virginia!

Why is there such a hue and cry about passenger profiling?. Strange. Even Jesus Christ, son of God, who was Asian would have quietly queued up in the separate queue for coloured people because obviously he would have reasoned that coloured people fitted the profile of could be terrorists more, and obviously as a peace loving person he would have understood the need for passenger profiling to prevent bloodshed by a could be bomb, and also he would have abided by the will of the majority. So would have mother Mary. Aint it?.

Re: 258: Hector...

Oh...so now you presume to speak on behalf of Jesus Christ, Son of God?????

What do you have???? A DIVINE MANDATE???

Actually Dear John Nash, I am gainfully emoployed in Ivestment Banking, but this is despite all of white British xenophobia and racism.

Krystal Soldier:
Show me which point in my post entails a divine mandate, and then i'll examine and get back. I respect Jesus Christ and his teachings and assume that's what will happen based on my beliefs about him. Religion and 'preachings claimed by custodians of religions to be that of Jesus, Buddha etc' is based more on beliefs than scientific proof(Science has neither proved nor disproved God's existence). To believe or not to believe what i think of the divine entity is my right and i have not flouted any law in doing so. Do you go around questioning the Church or the Bible everyday about the thousands of controlling teachings they advocate in the name of God?. Guess not. Evolution of man was and is based on theory, whatever aspect it maybe including physics for example. So why dont you instead of thwarting(thats what it seems to be)free expression of ideas - use logical explanation as to why what i wrote is wrong, instead of straight away pointing a finger at me?. If you said what you said because you believe the opposite of what i wrote - lets say- then do you have the mandate of God to say only what you wrore is right? (in my opinion you dont need a mandate however- and i am sure you too give opinions about people
and things every day. Now you did not like what i wrote). Request that you back up an argument with accompanying reason and logic, not passion.

My point is my good friend John Nash, that when I point to the most extreme examples of your wrong doing, and you point to the most extreme examples of my short-sightedness, and we refuse to see each other's point, we end up in a state of stalemate, and its back to good old jungle instinct survival for the fittest. The reality is that you may be right about some things, and I am right about most things of course :-) but there is a middle ground, which until the likes of you continue to ignore, we will get nowhere. Passenger profiling like racial/racist profiling gives a false sense of security, with politicians and the media jumping with fervour on every story where their failing policies can be shown as working for mere PR purposes. Picking at every single incident with a tooth comb, we can write thousands of pages on this blog, where I can continue to justify my position and you yours, and in the end neither of us gets very far. The reality is that every single incident has complicated intricate details. Finding real solutions to the reasons behind so called terror, and doing something about them will bring an end, or at least reduce the incidence of terrorism. If I remember right Bush and Blair both said something to the effect of taking the war to 'their' door step, to avoid casualties at home. I guess 'they' decided to bring the war to your/our doorsteps, and of course, you like these so-called terrorists don't like it. We keep hearing that we are at war, but yet, the other side with which we are at war is expected to, what? Just sit and wait to be shot? Either we are at war, and the other side will defend themselves, or we are not, in which case western attacks would be merely attacks on innocent civilians, and the name for that is genocide!

Britain was not ready to stop being a racist county in the mid-late seventies when racism became unacceptable. If you are a white UK citizen - please don't give me your opinion because you simply don't know what being the wrong colour in OUR country is like. The current call for profiling is a symptom of this fact.

It may not always be overt, but it is always there. Apply for a job with an Asian name - do you think it will help your chances? I know there are very many exceptions, but recent events have shown me that there are far fewer exceptions than I hoped.

The right wing press suggest that these extreme measures are necessary to save lives. I suggest that they will endanger many more....

Extremists are not formed overnight. It takes years of events to push them into the terrorists arms. What exactly pushes them this way needs to be studied, but simplifying it to just blame their 'twisted' religion, whilst ignoring the myriad of other factors that make up a person helps nobody. This is where the profiling should occur.

Will an Asian child seeing his/her parents being treated differently because of their skin colour grow up to love or hate the country he/she belongs too??? Hating your country is a good first step to doing reactionary things later in life. Just the fact we are having this debate is having an effect on our youngest minds…..

Profiling may make it harder for certain people to get a bomb on a plane, but it makes it EASIER for people that do not fit that description, it legitimises the racist views of our less enlightened citizens and breeds more anger and discontentment amongst the people being searched.

Profiling may have a role, but not based on skin colour / religion. This is nothing short of racial harassment.

Why not just ban ALL hand luggage. If you can't live without a certain item for a few hours you don't fly. Simple as that. If you really need something special (medicine maybe), you can arrange to post it in advance, get it checked, and have it given to you on the plane.

This is the only foolproof method. Nobody gets offended. Nobody dies.

I get the feeling that many people in Britain and America would rather collectively punish Asians – especially Muslims rather than treat people as individuals.

Re: 261...Hector..I certainly did not imply or intend to question your faith...I was merely amused to note that instead of 'believing' you take on yourself the responsibility to speak for Christ.

BTW, (1) Jesus, it is usually claimed - and note that it is merely a claim - was supposed to be Semitic - here in the ethnological sense rather than in the linguistic sense - rather than Asian (!) (2)Further, you say - "Even Jesus Christ, son of God, who was Asian would have quietly queued up in the separate queue for coloured people because obviously he would have reasoned that coloured people fitted the profile of could be terrorists more..." - sorry, there is nothing 'obvious' about it, especially because your statement is one of belief and not of fact.

Oh yeah...one other thing... "coloured"???? I hope you recognize that the term "Coloured" continues to carry with it racist colonial connotations...no rocket science needed for this - a brief review of late 19th and early 20th century history should highlight this! I hasten to add that by drawing your attention to this, I do not mean to imply that you are using the term in this sense.

Now, if you say you 'believe' this is what Christ would have done - I can't argue with you for, as you put it, "To believe or not to believe what i think of the divine entity is my right..." In this you are absolutely correct.

What I was noting - in your previous post - was the 'assertion' that Christ would have done the things that you mention. Nowhere in your previous post (# 258) did you indicate that it was/ is your belief that Christ would do what you say.

But all things aside, let's drop this for the discussion is on the merits/ demerits of profiling. Why drag Christ (or for that matter any religious/ spiritual figure) into the discussion.

#263

If this country ever slipped back into its more extreme times of racial co-exstistence, and displayed "more" racial tendencies towards minority groups, would YOU be able to ask the question why, or would you just brand?

Racists are not formed overnight. It takes years of events to push them into the Far Right arms. What exactly pushes them that way needs to be studied, but simplifying it to just blame their racist heritage, whilst ignoring the myriad of other factors that make up a person helps nobody. This is where the real profiling should occur.

Fits both ways, only the potential racists(a word, or should I say concept that should exclude no one) are the majority of this country, but of course with me being a whiteman your obviously think my opinion doesent count

dave nobody at or around #263

i agree in essence with all you say, strong points you've made, as my posts will confirm, i am not at all keen on having different [profiling] reactions to people because of their apparent race, not only does it fail as any reasonable person can see, but as you state, it feeds racism, which is reason enough not to go down that route

i also understand that you must have personal experience of many examples of bigotry against people simply because they are black or asian (and i am ashamed to note that i have witnessed it myself, from many 'sides' towards 'others')...however, as hard to credit as it may seem, there are very, very rare occasions when a white person is on the receiving end of violence or ill-treatment at the hands of others, even in this country, myself included, but (i think in a similar way to yourself ?) i would never suggest that in any way excuses revenge, retribution, continuation or escalation of descrimination of any kind

perhaps my experience has skewed my thinking, but i have always from a young age had the opinion that racism is just plain nuts, usually based on irrational fear or jealousy, and should never be a part of, or seem to be (or be interpretable as being) sanctioned by our 'leaders'

i know what some readers of this will think, they'll think 'liberal', etc, but it seems to me that there is a large, poorly represented sector of our society, i count myself as one of them, not liberal, not 'leftie', but rational, and capable of seeing past all the liberal/neocon bitching and back biting, to the responsible, fair and reasonable ground that is presently buried under daily mail b.s., new labour spin and things of that sort

Hi, Special K (262)

I have been probing your arguments to get you to stereotype in order to make the point that profiling is not stereotyping. Profiling tries to find the few rotten apples in the barrel, not proclaim that all the apples in the barrel are rotten.
I have welcomed your views and I have enjoyed the opportunity to participate.

Atiq wrote "The USA claims to be a democracy and land of the free but realistically actually is very racist - just look at the response to the New Orleans disaster."
--------------------------------

Then by the same token what are we to think of Muslims in Darfur. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Darfur highlights YOUR terrible capabilities when left unchecked by Western nations. US is not perfect by a long shot but as far as my limited knowledge goes they do not round up young black women and children to rape and hack them to pieces, thats the muslims. If you think this is acceptable and democratic I feel very sorry for you. Pleae sort yourselves out before criticising the West - you don't have a leg to stand on.

Kate at or around #268

i think it unfair that you assume that Atiq must bear responsibilty for the actions of others, and that he is somehow an accountable representative of a larger group

hacking people up may be overt, but adandoning people to their fate is equitable to it

there are many people (on many 'sides' - can i assume that to be your angle ?) in the position Atiq finds himself, who can reason, see some just concerns on many sides, are not adequately represented or are misrepresented as 'liberal' or 'leftie', and are simultaneously attacked for the actions of the group (whether country or religion) to whom they may be, or appear to be part of

without wishing to annoy Atiq by speaking for him, i would suggest that if you searched out and read his many posts, you may find it to be apparent that he does not condone violence, racism, terrorism, war, or organsations (be they religious or state) that use any of the above to further their aims

and all concerns about the actions of any such groups, should be addressed to the APPOINTED leaders, whether self appointed or elected (i see no evidence that Atiq presents himself as being leader of any group, but instead as a voice within it - something nearly all share in common)

In reply to Matt post 269. Correct, you are in no position to speak for Atiq.
In addition, if he feels free to throw generalistic punches about the whole of the US then he must be man enough to accept the same generalisations made regards the treatment of defenceless and voiceless people in Darfur by Muslims.

It's easy to take pot shots at the US but heaven forbid we turn the mirror on Muslim countries. Lefties as you call yourselves will come unstuck with this issue (but since it doesn't get much coverage you probably won't be ranting about it).

i'm not a leftie, sorry to disappoint you

Kate, at or around #270

you clearly do not understand that there are more possible points of view than two - not all of us like to be counted in your two-part world

if you think it accurate to call me "leftie" (i never said i was a leftie, so, as usual with people of your fervent "i believe THIS one of the 'two possible' lines of 'reason'" philosophy, you are guilty of misquoting, misrepresenting, and in my opinion defaming me, and so your pathetic two tone world continues to exert its force), then i would suggest it is equally accurate to call you fool

you keep reading your daily mail (or whatever newspaper 'football team' you support), but don't continue for one more second to labour under the misconception that i'll be reading the guardian or anything similar

as much as you may have difficulty appreciating it, the truth is that you are as much a problem as the 'lefties' you hate so much

#272

I agree there are more possible points of view than two, but I also count myself and everbody else as being part of the "pathetic two tone world". I believe this because to every individual there is two worlds, ones own personal world, and not ones own personal world, so therefore, your own personal opinion and not your own personal opinion.

You may change your opinion after hearing or seeing someone elses point of view, but you're still left with, your opinion, and consequently, not your opinion.

To J @273 and Matt, I simply would like an answer to why it is OK for Atiq to attack the US with racist generalisations whilst the racist atrocities perputrated by muslims in Darfur gets swept under the carpet. I have not heard a peep from Muslims on this issue - attacking UK and US seems only agenda as Atiqs post points out.

#274

Unfortunately you misinterpret my point, my point is that thinking the world isnt two tone is incorrect.

I have expressed my opinion on your question "Why it is OK for........" on the "which side are you on" debate #141

yes, J Last, i completely understand what you're saying, but i think you understand the context of my words: that all too often people (not necessarily you, Kate), try to boil all the complex possibilities and interconnections down to simple up/down, left/right, good/bad arguments, where at the first sign of another possibly having a differing view, they become leftie to the others conservative, tory to the liberal etc

i just think that is a shame, and gets in the way of genuine, mutually acceptable progress, stifling the (actually possible) consensus, as people are often herded into larger groups with diametrically opposed beliefs

it is not a prerequisite of the rational to hear one accusation but not the other, i have heard many voices (both within and without) raising concerns over american domestic and foreign policy ( ), similarly i have heard many voices including within the muslim community willing to raise their disgust at terrorism, so from where i'm looking there are more than two worlds after all, but somehow those many worlds could also paradoxically be thought of as 'one', it is that 'one' world i would like to hear more from

yes, J Last, i completely understand what you're saying, but i think you understand the context of my words: that all too often people (not necessarily you, Kate), try to boil all the complex possibilities and interconnections down to simple up/down, left/right, good/bad arguments, where at the first sign of another possibly having a differing view, they become leftie to the others conservative, tory to the liberal etc

i just think that is a shame, and gets in the way of genuine, mutually acceptable progress, stifling the (actually possible) consensus, as people are often herded into larger groups with diametrically opposed beliefs

it is not a prerequisite of the rational to hear one accusation but not the other, i have heard many voices (both within and without) raising concerns over american domestic and foreign policy ( ), similarly i have heard many voices including within the muslim community willing to raise their disgust at terrorism, so from where i'm looking there are more than two worlds after all, but somehow those many worlds could also paradoxically be thought of as 'one', it is that 'one' world i would like to hear more from

incidentally, trawling the various threads i notice several references by Atiq, to his displeasure with all forms of unjust attack, including terrorism, knew it was in there somewhere, just don't ask me to find it again !

hello, sorry, but (as you can see ?) post 277(+/-) is a double post of 276(+/-)

didn't mean to double post - very tricky when some are delayed and some never show

It now appears that passengers on a flight from Malaga to Manchester have conducted their own profiling, based, it seems on the appearance of and language spoken by the 2 passengers eventually booted off their flight. This makes me wonder whether the Airline could be taken to court for racial discrimination.

We are all (all races, all faiths) potential racists because of the way human beings have traditionally related to and formed bonds with each other.

Traditionally, most people feel the greatest bond to and loyalty for:-

Their children.
Spouse and close family (mother father brother sister)
Other family members, close friends.
People from their own village, town or area
People who look and sound like them.
People from the same area of the country e.g. North East.
People from their own country.
People who speak the same language
etc. etc

In other words, once you get outside the family, most people feel more loyalty to those with whom they have common history, appearance, accent and language.

There are variations, e.g. religion, but, not having a religion, I'm not sure where this kicks in. I only know that I'm completely turned off by somebody who appears obsessively religious or who tries to convert me to their faith.

Most educated and rational people know that treating people unfairly because of their race or religion is wrong.

When fear kicks in, we lose some or all of that rationality. But shouldn't the pilot of a plane be the one who absolutely must remain rational?

*this is a ducplicate post, but the original has disappeared, it is an important point however*

incidentally, trawling the various threads i notice several references by Atiq, to his displeasure with all forms of unjust attack, including terrorism, knew it was in there somewhere, just don't ask me to find it again !