Tuesday 5 January 2010

Racism in Plane Sight

As most everyone now is aware of, an attempted terrorist attack was thwarted by a brave passenger on a Christmas Day flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, that originated in Nigeria. If for some reason you are living under a rock and still have internet access, the story can be found here.

As a response to the event, the TSA heightened its state of awareness and there is even talk about using full body scanners, sparking much controversy. You hear about that all over in the news. It can be summed up like this, "Oh no! That professional airport security agent might be able to see my privates for less than half a minute!" Anyways, that's besides the point. What doesn't seem to have met nearly as much criticism (when it ought to have seen more than the full body scanner talk did) is the blatant racial profiling of citizens of 14 nations. People carrying passports that were issued in those fourteen countries will be subject to extra screening. The story is here.

A nation supposedly sworn to uphold justice and morality, now in a move reminiscent to the racial discrimination of the 1960's and before, has once again made racism policy. The nations which are targeted are: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria (which are considered state sponsors of terrorism by America) as well as Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen. Notice how Cuba is the only non-predominantly Muslim nation listed.

Not only is this blatantly racist, but I personally doubt if it will work at all. It isn't particularly hard to fake a passport. In fact, it's positively a walk in the park.

What I think would be more effective would be paying attention to all databanks with potential terrorists, paying attention to people don't check luggage, paying attention to people who pay massive sums in cahs, paying attention to people whose fathers warn the US government about their sons as well as paying attention to people who have had visas rejected by other nations. In fact, why don't we subject people who meet these requirements to extra security checks instead of subjecting people born or living in the wrong country to profiling?

I love your change, Mr. President.

Wednesday 30 December 2009

zOMG iz haz a Blog!

Even worse than looking up lolcat pictures for my amusement or even frequenting 4chan, I've succumbed to the world of blogging. If a thought pops into a mind, I'll just blog about it. Nevertheless, It's not going to be a self-centred pointless blog but will hopefully have some meaning and relevance.