Uncle Newt has gone bye-bye

[acroyear]

Gingrich: Six Muslim Scholars Should Have Been "Prosecuted" | TPMCafe:

"Those six people should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists. And the crew of the U.S. airplane should have been invited to the White House and congratulated for being correct in the protection of citizens." - Newt Gingrich

The quote, "terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought." is coming to mind...

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Things aren't always black and white. Iris has an obvious slant, but a little of this is worth reading:

Post with a bunch of links to news stories also including to the pdf of the police report complete with witness statements -- Lessee -- deliberately call attention to selves, before sitting separately in the front, middle, back of airplane, and everybody request seatbelt extenders -- heavy objects on strong cords -- and leave them on the floor near their feet instead of using as a seatbelt.

About an earlier America West case

[fiona64.livejournal.com]

I think the problem here is that the US media has, with the gleeful assistance of the current administration, so tremendously vilified Muslims that you run into a whole lot of "group think." I don't think that going about one's prescribed prayer ritual constitutes "deliberately calling attention to one's self." These are very devout people; if it's time to pray, it's time to pray. The end.

Furthermore, the clerics were assigned seats by the airline; I think that saying this is indicative of anything other than "your group can't always sit together" is rather sensationalistic.

Finally, as a forensic science major, I must tell you that eyewitness reports are the *least* reliable evidence, because people filter what they see through their perceptions of reality and their belief systems.

I agree with the blog commentator who likened this behavior to the "good Germans," frankly. This whole thing puts me in mind of the concentration camps that used to exist in the infields of local horse racing tracks here in California during WWII. If you (general you) scapegoat a people for their religion or their ethnicity in order to make yourself feel "superior," you should consider the company you're keeping.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

Um, no. From what I've read, and if you follow the links, they swapped around seats in order to sit in the configuration mentioned.

Also, if you spend some time reading what I linked to above (and yes, it's originally from a quite biased source) you'll see some discussion about the difference between doing one's normal daily prayers and shouting them in the boarding area.

Got a comment about the seatbelt extenders?

Please do read the witness statements* before discussing the reliability of eyewitness reports. There's a difference between "I saw a guy in a red shirt do X" and "I found this suspicious because of Y and Z." It's important not to work solely on profiling ("zomg! Muslims! On the Plane!") but when people put together more than one "hrm, something's strange" and one of those somethings strange is "several of the people pinging the strange meter now have quite good improvisable weapons at their feet" I think it's a bit much to say the law enforcement folk are overreacting.

(And no, I'm not applauding Gingritch, either.)

There's a balance. I'm not sure where it is, but much as "zomg, muslims on a plane" isn't and shouldn't be reason to question someone, "zomg, muslims" shoudn't be a reason /not/ to question someone, either.

*and yes, some of the statements are indeed zomg muslims on the plane. some are not, and the police report itself is not.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

(what does make the case particularly annoying is that I /don't/ think the zomg muslims were trying to take over the plane. I do think it's quite possible they were deliberately trying to hit the weird-o-meter sufficiently well to be taken off and questioned, in order to then have this very media discussion and set of protests that we're now seeing.)