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Op-Eds

Travel Advice for the Islamo-FraidyCat Set

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English: Easyjet (G-EZBZ) Airbus A319 aircraft...
English: Easyjet (G-EZBZ) Airbus A319 aircraft, London Stansted Airport, Essex, England, July 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On August 18, three siblings boarded an EasyJet flight at London’s Stansted airport. Maryam, Sakina and Ali Dharas were en route to Italy for a holiday. But before the flight could take off, they were asked to debark for questioning by police. Another passenger, apparently an amateur detective, deduced that because they are brown people and the two sisters wear hijabs — Muslim head scarves — they must be Islamic State terrorists. Which, of course, they weren’t. The plane eventually took off,  but presumably the incident cast a pall over the Dharas family’s holiday, as well as throwing the other passengers’ travel plans at least a little off-kilter.

This is far from the first reported incident of its kind. It’s probably far from the last. But it COULD be the last if those suffering from constant, crippling fear of sudden violent death at the hands of terrorists read this and follow a few simple rule of the (so to speak) road.

RULE NUMBER ONE: Stay home. Really. Under your bed if possible (that is, if someone you trust is willing to bring you food and water,  empty a bedpan a couple of times a day, and perhaps run to the library for new reading material every so often). It’s unlikely that the terrorists will hunt you down there. Of course, you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than attacked by a terrorist anywhere, but under the bed is probably pretty safe with respect to lightning, too.

RULE NUMBER TWO: If you absolutely, positively can’t avoid leaving your home, travel by private car. NOT by taxi! You might get a driver who’s brown, has an accent or wears headgear you find strange.

RULE NUMBER THREE: Before entering a business establishment, circle the parking lot a couple of times. You wouldn’t want to be surprised by scimitar-waving jihadists while ordering your double cheeseburger, fries and shake.

RULE NUMBER FOUR: It should go without saying, don’t travel by commercial aircraft, bus, etc. If you’re making a long trip and can’t drive yourself, charter a plane or limo or whatever. Tell them you want a “very American/British looking” pilot/driver. I’m sure they’ll know what you mean.

RULE NUMBER FIVE: If you can’t follow rules one through four, then pretty please with sugar on top sit down, shut up, and refrain from acting like an idiot in public and making everyone else’s life more difficult.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Op-Eds

War: The Islamic State and Western Politicians Against the Rest of Us

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Icon for censorship
Icon for censorship (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On July 28, London’s Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, aka “the Old Bailey,” announced the conviction of Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary on charges of “inviting support for a proscribed organization” (the Islamic State). He’ll be sentenced, likely to a long stint in prison, in September.

On August 18, social networking service Twitter announced that it has suspended 360,000 user accounts since mid-2015 — 235,000 of them just since February — for “promoting extremism.” While Twitter is theoretically a private sector entity, the New York Times reports that the company’s actions are motivated by “intensifying pressure on Twitter and other technology companies from the White House, presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton and government agencies.”

The United Kingdom is back in the business of holding political prisoners on a scale not seen since before the 1997 ceasefire in occupied … er, “Northern” … Ireland, and American social networks are handing the US government de facto power to censor Internet communications. What could possibly go wrong?

It’s easy to look the other way and whistle when the roundups target people like Choudary and the censorship is aimed at a particular variety of “extremism” enjoying little support in the UK or the US apart from small groups within insular communities.

First they came for the Islamists …

It’s easy not to notice that the terrorists who “hate us for our freedoms” chalk up a win each time those freedoms are diminished, openly or surreptitiously, in the name of fighting terrorism.

It became necessary to destroy the Constitution in order to save it …

We are told the west is at war. That much is true. But the central front in that war isn’t Iraq or Syria or Libya, nor is the enemy the Islamic State. “Daesh” is a gnat in a hurricane, empowered solely by western forces toppling secular regimes and creating power vacuums in which it can set up shop.

The real central front is the west itself and the real enemy is the western governments transforming themselves into totalitarian regimes before our eyes.

Every time an Anjem Choudary is imprisoned, or a Twitter account is shut down for “extremism,” or a beachfront town in France bans “burkinis,” the west looks less like the cradle of the Enlightenment and more like the Soviet Union circa 1937 or Germany circa 1939.

The best weapon against bad ideas is better ideas, not censorship and political imprisonment. Don’t let London or Washington wrest that weapon from us.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Scott Adams, Trump Card

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English: This photo depicts Donald Trump's sta...
Donald Trump’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I agree with Scott Adams, who’s probably perpetually peeved that most people know him only as the creator of Dilbert — his accomplishments range far beyond that — on one thing: Donald Trump will win the 2016 presidential election in a landslide.

Adams predicted that outcome more than a year ago, at a time when I was still having a good laugh over the silly idea of Trump getting within a thousand miles of the Republican nomination. My friend Thane Eichenauer kept urging me to pay more attention to what Adams had to say, but I kept ignoring both of them until, oh, right about now.

Scott Adams’s General Theory of the Inevitability of Trump differs substantially from my own simplistic hypothesis, so much so that the former deserves a grandiose title and the latter doesn’t. Adams believes that  Trump has masterfully scripted himself into the lead role in a presidential campaign produced as a three-act movie. I just think that Americans despise Hillary Clinton even more than they loathe Donald Trump.

But hey, why can’t it be both?

Here’s what pulls me, kicking and screaming, toward Adams’s way of thinking about the race:

In 1997, according to Wikipedia (which references a San Jose, California Mercury News piece accessible only via Archive.org’s Wayback Machine and consisting of video files that either aren’t there or that my computer doesn’t like), Adams conducted an unusual and telling experiment at the invitation of Logitech CEO Pierluigi Zappacosta.

Disguised as rock star management consultant “Ray Mebert,” Adams expertly guided an eager group of Logitech managers through the process of revising their group’s mission statement into something “so impossibly complicated that it has no real content whatsoever.”

That sounds remarkably like what Donald Trump has done to the Republican Party over the course of the last year or so, doesn’t it? I mean, c’mon … building a wall and making Mexico pay for it? Someone’s obviously been tapping directly into the mind of Dilbert‘s megalomaniac companion, Dogbert.

I have to wonder if, somewhere deep down in the Trump campaign’s FEC reports, an inquiring mind might find multiple records of disbursements to one Ray Mebert for campaign consulting? OK, no, I don’t really wonder about that. I checked. Adams must have picked a different pseudonym for this particular escapade. I bet he still has the wig and fake mustache from his Logitech outing, though.

Well played, Mr. Adams, well played.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY