Mohammed Atta could have sued the United States for racial profiling and violation of his civil rights. Please take a look at two stories:
Reuters, Muslim-Americans Sue Govt for Racial Profiling
Wed Apr 20, 2005 04:51 PM ETBy Larry Fine
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Five Muslim-Americans sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday alleging racial profiling when they were detained and fingerprinted by border agents after returning from a religious conference.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, named Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff among four defendants in what the New York Civil Liberties Union called a case of profiling.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman declined comment since the case -- involving the reentry of the five U.S. citizens by car from Canada -- is in litigation.
Court papers said that on their way back from the Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) conference in Toronto in December 2004, the plaintiffs were detained for up to six hours with other Muslim-Americans and searched, photographed and fingerprinted, the lawsuit said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman Kristi Clemens defended the government's actions and said, "Our priority mission is to prevent terrorists and their weapons from entering this country."
In the past the agency has denied the use of profiling on the borders but said intelligence has shown that conferences similar to the one in Toronto have been used by terrorist organizations.
RELIGIOUS CONFERENCE
The suit charged the Muslim-Americans were taken aside after being asked if they attended the religious conference and were then subjected to unlawful treatment at a border crossing near Buffalo, New York, under a new Homeland Security policy.
"They are engaging in profiling," said Donna Lieberman, executive director of the NYCLU said. "The government detained people because they attended a conference that was perfectly legal, exercising their basic rights."
"We were told that we were being pulled aside because of a random selection," said plaintiff Sawsaan Tabbaa, an orthodontist from Amherst, New York, who was traveling with her four children. "Then we saw the whole Muslim community there that had attended the Islamic conference.
"It was unbelievable. I am proud of being American but I couldn't believe my eyes something like this could happen."
Tabbaa said she refused to be fingerprinted, but finally relented after breaking down in tears after more than four hours of detention.
The suit does not seek monetary damages, but asks for a declaration that the government action was unlawful, an injunction against further enforcement of such policies and practices and erasing from all federal databases of information obtained from the plaintiffs.
Lieberman, whose organization filed the suit along with the American Civil Liberties Union and Council on American-Islamic Relations, said there was nothing about the RIS conference to raise suspicions.
"If the government has suspicions about criminal activities they have every right and indeed the obligation to go after those suspicions," Lieberman said. "This is a case of rounding up the usual suspects in derogation of their rights and in derogation of all of our liberties." [link]
Now another story coming via Little Green Footballs:
On the morning of September 11, 2001, knee-jerk political correctness had lethal consequences.
MICHAEL Tuohey “stared the devil in the eyes and didn’t recognize him.”
Now he kicks himself for not having acted, although if he had, our government probably would’ve punished him for trying to take the devil down.
Until recently, Tuohey worked the ticket counter at the airport in Portland, Maine, first for Allegheny Airlines, and then its successor, US Airways. He’ll never forget one particular day of his 34 years of employment.
It began like any other. This married Army vet had a routine. He’d wake up at 3:30 a.m. and walk to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee from the machine he’d pre-set the night before. Then he’d flicked on the TV, watch some CNN and check the weather forecast. After feeding his cat, he’d jump in his car for the 15-minute drive to work.
On most days, the big rush would come 6-7:30 a.m. That’s when the tiny Maine airport would be abuzz with travelers heading for connecting flights in Philadelphia, Boston and Pittsburgh. But it’s what happened at 5:43 a.m. on a particular day that he replays in his mind over and over.
At that time on a Tuesday, two men wearing sport coats and ties approached his counter with just 17 minutes to spare before their flight to Boston. (Tuohey now knows they’d stayed the night before at the Comfort Inn down the road.) And he suspects they arrived late to take advantage of an airline system that was then “more concerned about on-time departure than effective screening.”
He thought the pair were unusual. First, they each held a $2,500 first-class, one-way ticket to Los Angeles (via Boston). “You don’t see many of those.”
The second reason is not so easy to explain.
“It was just the look on the one man’s face, his eyes,” Tuohey recently told me.
“By now, everyone in America has seen a picture of this man, but there is more life in that photograph we’ve all seen than he had in the flesh and blood. He looked like a walking corpse. He looked so angry. And he wouldn’t look directly at me.”
The man was Mohamed Atta. The other fellow (“he was young and had a goofy smile, I can’t believe he knew he was going to die that day”) was Abdul Aziz al Omari. Michael Tuohey is the individual who checked them in at the Portland airport as they began their murderous journey.
“I looked up, and asked them the standard questions. The one guy was looking at me. It sent a chill through me. Something in my stomach churned. And subconsciously, I said to myself, ‘If they don’t look like Arab terrorists, nothing does.’ ”
“Then I gave myself a mental slap. In over 34 years, I had checked in thousands of Arab travelers, and I never thought this before. I said to myself, ‘That’s not nice to think. They are just two Arab businessmen.’ ” And with that, Tuohey handed them their boarding passes.
As they walked through the metal detectors, out of his sight, the jackets and ties were gone. Now the two were wearing open-neck dress shirts when they went through security.
Atta and Omari arrived in Boston at 6:45 a.m., where they were joined by Satam al Suqami, Wail al Shehri and Waleed al Shehri. The five then checked in, and boarded American Airlines Flight 11 for L.A. The flight was scheduled to depart at 7:45 a.m. It actually left at 7:59. At 8:46, it hit the North Tower. [link]
Mohammed Atta could have sued the United States for racial profiling and violation of his civil rights. Still, we would have been better off.
posted by: jrtelegraph
Political correctness, cultural marxism, diversity, or whatever you choose to call it is a weapon utilized by those who wish to destroy the West.
Who seeks to defeat the West?
1. The only constant enemy of the West for the past 1,400 years. Must I state the obvious and point to the elephant in the living room?
2. Self-loathing Westerners, drunk on their guilt and nihilism. These people are willing to do the unthinkable: make alliances with groups who would like nothing better than to exterminate them.
At a minimum the practice of political correctness must be ended. Scorn those who practice it, starve the institutions that nurture it, and speak PROUDLY of Western ideals and history. This blog and many others like it are hopefully just the beginning of an awakening by our culture. The desire for self-preservation is present in all cultures and the sooner political correctness is excised, the sooner we'll be able to defend and assert ourselves.
Once political correctness is defeated, the foolishness of the last 40 years will melt away: suicidal immigration policies, government-subsidized illegitimacy, reverse racism, coddled criminals, etc.
Posted by: Leonidas | April 27, 2005 at 11:42 AM