Copycat Bidness | Sepia Mutiny

A while back, SM profiled Mr. Hemant Lakhani, a Brit national accused of trying to sell missiles to Islamo-fundi-fascists. When asked Do You Feel Safer, one SM commenter noted –

I again wonder whether the government will be engaging in similar efforts to target White Christian populations in Michigan

Well, rest a little easier gentle reader, in what appears to be a near perfect copy of the Lakhani “sting”, a 68 yr old PA man (presumably a white christian?) has been arrested trying to sell bombs to an undercover agent posing as an Al Qaeda operative –

A 68-year-old Pennsylvania man was arrested on charges he tried to build a bomb and sell it to an agent he thought was a member of Al-Qaida, officials said Monday. Ronald Allen Grecula of Bangor, Pa., was arrested Friday in Houston during a meeting with undercover FBI agents…

If only Mr. Grecula had read Sepia Mutiny, he’d know that this particular line of biz – esp. if you’re an amateur – isn’t one you wanna dip your toe into… BTW, Mr. Grecula, the racial profiling defense didn’t work too well in Mr. Lakhani’s case, I doubt you’ll have better luck with it.

3 thoughts on “Copycat Bidness”

An isolated incident absent any other context of racism by law enforcement against White Christians doesn’t really rise to the level of profiling of White Christians, but I don’t feel like having that argument again right now.

Perhaps – and I know this is a long shot – race isn’t the first filter used by the govt when prosecuting these sorts of crimes… 🙂

The point behind arguments against racial profiling is that race (or actually, in the case of what I was talking about before, religion and nationality) are inappropriate filters to use in any significant way because:

1) it exacerbates existing forms of social discrimination and promotes a climate of suspicion against a group 2) alienates a community that could hypothetically help in practices like community policing (that’s why a lot of police forces and national security experts object to blind racial profiling) 3) misuses government resources by focusing on the wrong targets for the wrong reasons rather than pursuing more tailored and effective strategies (i.e. to actually look for the needle in the haystack rather than throwing out the whole thing) 4) traditionally has been abused–like the death penalty, no matter what you think of it on an ideological level, on an empirical level it’s cleraly biased towards certain groups and against others. 5) has human consequences for the people involved. 6) hurts foreign policy by undermining the reputation of the United States internationally for tolerance.

Of course identity group membership is not the only factor used and it’s hard to say in a lot of cases what the primary factor is and what secondary factors are. However, regardless, it tends to be inappropriate and ineffective from what I have seen personally of its use. You should really look at Special Registration (disclosure: I contributed heavily to that report), which is a great and sad example of how reliance on selective enforcement (in that case overtly on the basis of religion, nationality, and immigration status and indirectly on ethnicity/race) is really counterproductive for everyone involved. It netted close to 0 results (and i”m being charitable there), it broke up countless families, undermined communities ecnomically and socially, hurt other immigrants by shifting resources away from services like extending visas or processing greencard applications and towards registering Muslimish men and teenagers.

Saurav on May 24, 2005 at 2:24 am said:

An isolated incident absent any other context of racism by law enforcement against White Christians doesn’t really rise to the level of profiling of White Christians, but I don’t feel like having that argument again right now.
vinod on May 24, 2005 at 2:30 am said:

Perhaps – and I know this is a long shot – race isn’t the first filter used by the govt when prosecuting these sorts of crimes… 🙂
Saurav on May 24, 2005 at 11:19 am said:

The point behind arguments against racial profiling is that race (or actually, in the case of what I was talking about before, religion and nationality) are inappropriate filters to use in any significant way because:

1) it exacerbates existing forms of social discrimination and promotes a climate of suspicion against a group 2) alienates a community that could hypothetically help in practices like community policing (that’s why a lot of police forces and national security experts object to blind racial profiling) 3) misuses government resources by focusing on the wrong targets for the wrong reasons rather than pursuing more tailored and effective strategies (i.e. to actually look for the needle in the haystack rather than throwing out the whole thing) 4) traditionally has been abused–like the death penalty, no matter what you think of it on an ideological level, on an empirical level it’s cleraly biased towards certain groups and against others. 5) has human consequences for the people involved. 6) hurts foreign policy by undermining the reputation of the United States internationally for tolerance.

Of course identity group membership is not the only factor used and it’s hard to say in a lot of cases what the primary factor is and what secondary factors are. However, regardless, it tends to be inappropriate and ineffective from what I have seen personally of its use. You should really look at Special Registration (disclosure: I contributed heavily to that report), which is a great and sad example of how reliance on selective enforcement (in that case overtly on the basis of religion, nationality, and immigration status and indirectly on ethnicity/race) is really counterproductive for everyone involved. It netted close to 0 results (and i”m being charitable there), it broke up countless families, undermined communities ecnomically and socially, hurt other immigrants by shifting resources away from services like extending visas or processing greencard applications and towards registering Muslimish men and teenagers.