An Act of Terror in Moscow

An act of terror killed at least 35 people and wounded many more in Moscow's Domodedovo Airport. It is suspected that the terrorist attack was perpetrated, as usual in Russia, by Chechen insurgents:

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A suspected suicide bomber has struck at Russia's busiest airport, killing at least 35 people and challenging Kremlin efforts to crush armed insurgency and tackle growing nationalist tensions in the country's heartland. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday's attack at Moscow's Domodedovo airport; but the action bore many of the hallmarks of militants fighting for an Islamist state in the North Caucasus region, on Russia's southern frontiers.

The last major terrorist attack in Moscow took place in March of 2010 when suicide bombers blew themselves up in the city's busy subway killing 40 people and injuring many more. Terror attacks staged by Chechen radicals have plagued the country for years. Everybody around the world is deeply saddened by the suffering of the Russian people whose lives have been overshadowed by the constant threat of terror attacks.

The Case of Mohamed Osman Mohamud: A "Grand" Terrorist Plot Uncovered?

Something prevents me from taking part in the massive rejoicing that surrounds (at least, in the media) a capture by the FBI of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali-born teenager. It seems that, in the absence of actual terrorists, the FBI is now finding teenagers who might be miserable and rebellious (which should be SO hard to do), convincing them to go through a terrorist attack, supplying them with explosives, and then catching them and reporting this success to the eagerly awaiting public. And everything is timed beautifully to happen right after Thanksgiving and in the midst of a public outcry against the invasive TSA measures. Of course, it would have been more useful to catch this terrorist while he was trying to board an air-plane. But not to worry, I'm sure we will be regaled by that particular show in no time.

I don't want to enter into a debate about whether entrapment should be considered a legal police tactic used to combat crime. I know that some leading jurists have maintained that entrapment is wrong. This isn't about entrapment per se, though. It's about an entrapment of someone not old enough to buy alcohol. In my experience, it's harder to find a teenager who isn't angry at the entire universe than a teenager who is. If we were to criminalize all violent teenage fantasies, everybody would be in jail right now.

If the FBI truly had nothing else to do with their time, the ultra-complex operation of involving Mohamed in this convoluted plot might have made some sense. It feels, however, like part of the same strategy employed in the case of new TSA regulations: alleviate the public's anxiety by a well-planned to show in order to prevent people from concentrating on what they should really worry about. In my experience, the word "terrorism" gets bandied about especially actively whenever something really bad is coming in terms of the economy. Should we expect another crash?

The Terrorism Quiz

My reader Geo brought to my attention this great quiz on terrorism prepared by Dr. Jeffrey Rudolph who was the Quebec representative of the East Timor Alert Network. The quiz gives answers to the following questions:

1. Who made the following statement? “To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom.”

5. How many suicide bombings had Iraq experienced before the 2003 US invasion?

13. True or False: The majority of terrorists come from the lower classes.

17. True or False: The religion of Islam is an important cause of terrorism.

21. True or False: A majority of the people in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates support al-Qa'ida's goal of creating an Islamic state.

22. True or False: In 1997 a declassified CIA training manual detailed torture methods used against suspected subversives in Central America during the 1980s.

Find detailed and informative answers to these and many other questions here. Some of the answers might surprise you. I, for instance, was convinced that most terrorists come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Feel free to tell me what surprised you the most from the information provided in the quiz in the comments.

And thank you, Geo, for sending me the link! You are a fountain of information.

Airport Insecurity Measures

This is what the new bout of anti-terrorism hysteria has brought us. The European Union is planning to force all of its members to adopt these intrusive and humiliating scanners in airports.

Some European countries that have somehow been able to preserve certain remains of human dignity and mental sanity - Spain and Germany, for example - are still resisting the madness. Others, like the Nederlands and Italy, are falling all over themselves in their desire to appease the United States by any means necessary.

It is still unclear whether anybody on the planet honestly believes that these invasive procedures will really do something to stop terrorism. We have been removing our shoes in airports for a while now but somehow I don't remember hearing any reports about hundreds of terrorist attacks being stopped by these measures.

The whole mess of this last failed attempt to blow up an airplane is a competition in ineptness. The terrorist is so inept that instead of exploding the airplane he blows off his own junk. The counterterrorism agencies are so useless that they never figure out he might be dangerous in spite of warnings. Obama-haters are so stupid that they blame him for the fact that this terrorist managed to board a plane in Amsterdam. They must honestly believe that Amsterdam is part of the US. The European Union is so silly that it is willing to strip itself not only of clothes but of the last shred of dignity to make the US happy.

I hope that my blog doesn't get tagged as pornographic because of these images. This is not pornography, this is our new reality.

This is how we are willing to be seen by airport security.

This is where our fear is taking us.

P.S. The people at airport security can easily adjust the resolution on the scanners to achieve a much better visibility of any area of the body, including the genitals.

P.P.S The third picture has been pulled since the reader Mike pointed out that it is fake. Thank you, Mike, for your vigilance!

Fear and Dignity

In view of the recent failed terrorist attempt to blow up an airplane over Detroit, the authorities in Netherlands have announced that from now on everybody who wants to board a US-bound airplane will have to go through a scanner that shows the contours of your naked body to the customs officers. The US supported this decision.

It is curious to observe to what lengths people are ready to go in order to convince themselves that inflicting yet another inconvenience, humiliation or debasement upon themselves is going to make them safe. For years we have been taking off our shoes, going through explosive-testing cameras, enduring endless lines in the airports, and undergoing searches and questioning. And none of it works. I don't know how many times I, a peaceful graduate student and later college professor, have been taken aside into a special room for suspicious people and questioned for lengthy periods of time when trying to cross the US-Canada border. I got so used to it that now I always arrive at the airport 3 hours early to make myself available for questioning which is surely coming. None of these measures, however, prevented the most recent terrorist - who was on a list of suspicious individuals - from getting on board with explosives.

Now we are supposed to parade naked in front of the customs officers in futile hopes that this new humiliation will finally buy us some peace of mind. It won't, though. All that is awaiting us as a next step in this frantic rush to appease our fear is a prison-type cavity search. The fear is growing, and soon enough nothing short of having a customs officer with his nose up your anus will make us feel secure enough.

Understanding the consequences of certain events, seeing similarities, and experiencing fear as a result is a very human thing to feel. So we attempt to strip ourselves of our humanity by stripping obediently in front of the customs officers in hopes that if we manage to play the role of cattle convincingly, nobody will want to hurt us. 'Look what we allow to be done to us,' we seem to say to the terrorists. 'Look how readily we give up our comfort, our privacy, our self-respect. See how sad and pathetic we are? Why would you want to waste your time hurting such a sorry bunch of sheep?'

It doesn't help, though. Dehumanizing ourselves is not a way to go.