Is Racial Profiling Morally Acceptable at Airports?

If anything, "racial profiling" is morally required at airports.

Of course, there are a couple of caveats here:

1. Since "race" is just a cultural abstraction, what we really mean is that it profiling on appearances should be required.

2. "Profiling" does not mean "arresting" or "punishing" or "guilty!" or any other emotionally-charged term that is intended to make a point by lies and/or hyperbole.

3. "Profiling" refers to "give extra scrutiny".

All inspected people at airports fall into one of four categories:

1. True Positives. These are people who are correctly deemed as being dangerous, and are therefore kept from flying. All security precautions, machinery, and procedures are intended to catch these people -- but have any true positives actually been caught? If they were, they were not publicized .

2. True Negatives. These are people like you (I hope), me, and almost everyone else: Innocent and are deemed as innocent. Walk through the metal detector, and go to your gate.

3. False Positives: These are people who are flagged as being suspicious, but are really innocent. They are (we are told) flagged because of their suspicious behavior; e.g., buying a one-way ticket with cash and no bags, for instance. Theoretically, this group also includes the "flying imams" of Minneapolis, whose behavior was consistent with terrorism, but actually posed no threat.

4. False Negatives: People who clear security and then crash planes into skyscrapers; Mohammed Atta is a famous false negative.

The problems with airport security and profiling are related to Categories (3) and (4). Specifically, false positives and false negatives are errors that, in an ideal world, would be zero. That is, in our perfectly-calibtrated world, only Categories (1) and (2) would exist.

The trouble is that (3) and (4) cannot be eliminated together; in fact, when one category is reduced, the other will need to increase. Specifically, the best way to eliminate (3) is to clear everyone through security. Put another way, if no one is stopped, then no innocent people will be stopped.

And the best way to eliminate (4) is to stop everyone. If every last passenger is carefully screened, then we know (by definition) that bombers and hijackers will be screened, too.

However, neither of the above is practical. It isn't practical to automatically clear or screen everyone (unless passengers would be willing to pay much more for air travel, in both time and money).

Therefore, a balance has to be found between minimizing Errors (3) and (4). But no matter which balance is found there will be problems: Either too many innocent people will be screened or not enough bombers and hijackers will be screened. So, the best approach is to minimize Error (4) to the point where any additional additional reduction would create a disproportionate rise in Error (3). That is, a 1% error rate in allowing hijackers on planes might be better than a 0.9% error rate if that means screwing up the system but good.

So...how do we decrease the Error (4) rate without making thousands of travelers even more upset over airport delays? The answer (as you might have probably guessed) is to pre-screen people based on their likelihood of trying to blow up a plane. Put another way, at a given level of "passenger inconvenience", the probability of a disaster is lessened by profiling. Or, put yet another way, if profiling were to be discontinued, one of the error rates will need to go up: Either all passengers will have to go through more arduous security delays (without any added security), or more planes will be blown up. Take your pick.

The people in Category (3) are apparently less concerned about either of the above choices than they are about being singled out as a false positive. They say: "Profiling should cease, and other people should be singled out, too." Never mind that they will still be singled out -- what matters to them is that they will no longer need to feel envy of people in other groups that are waved through. That is, to lessen their sense of envy, everyone else must also be inconvenienced and/or more planes must crash. Adding huge costs to flying to ameliorate envy: Is that defensible? Sacrificing lives to ameliorate envy: Is that the moral solution?

Incidentally, profiling does not require that everyone from one group (say, people in Islamic garb) be singled out to the exclusion of everyone else. In fact, a (non-random) mix of checks would be better; if "looking Muslim" is the only way to get stopped, then hijackers would learn that they can get a free pass onto a plane by not "looking Muslim" -- as they did on 9/11. A probabilistic approach would be best; a completely random screening procedure, as stated above, is not only dangerous, but also ridiculous.

Should I Die for My Country?

This is a timely question, given the recent conduct of the kidnapped British sailors who immediately cooperated with, and allowed themselves to be humiliated by, their Iranian captors.

Anyway, most people would probably be ashamed to say anything other than "yes" to this question -- or at least they would say that they would die for their country under the right conditions.

But consider this question: How many people would unhesitatingly drown themselves so that some strangers can stay alive in the proverbial lifeboat? What's the difference between the two situations?

Maybe the lifeboat question should have several similar versions:

Version 1: Would you drown yourself to save six strangers on a boat that sprung a leak?

Version 2: Would you drown yourself to save six countrymen on a boat that was being attacked by a foreign country?

Version 3: Would you drown yourself to save six countrymen from the foreign ship if you could also kill the attackers on that ship?

The likelihood of a "yes" answer (and a "yes" action) would no doubt increase from Version 1 to Version 3.

So: What are the differences between the three versions? There are two:

1. The number of lives saved increases from six to an ambiguous future number if the enemy is attacked.

2. A collective is being saved.

Of the above two differences, the second is probably more influential. One way of seeing that is to pretend that you are sitting in front of three buttons, each of which will instantly kill you if pressed.

Button #1 says: "Push me to save six people, somewhere in the world, from being killed today."

Button #2 says: "Push me to save six of your people who are about to be killed by your group's enemies."

Button #3 says: "The future of your people is at stake. Push me to save six of them AND to kill those who are about to kill them."

In the emotionless confines of a room with buttons, and with the anonymity of the decision, it seems unlikely that any button would be pressed. But Button #1 would probably receive the fewest presses.

So, here are the conclusions:

A) Your group's "life" can be more important that your own life; it's the threatened group that matters, not the threatened individuals.

B) The actual number of people you save is probably not important. (Replace the six people with six hundred people, and see if it makes any difference.)

C) People who value their own lives more than anything else ought to be grateful that there are others who are willing to sacrifice.

D) People who are willing to sacrifice for their group ought to be grateful that there are others who place their own lives first. (Would you want to see cancer researchers enlist for front-line duty?)

E) If you voluntarily took an oath to defend your country, and you cooperate with the enemy and not even apologize for it afterwards, then you probably have very little group allegiance -- but more importantly, you are also a disgraceful fraud.

What is the Difference between Policing and War?

Policing requires the use of retaliatory force (and to a much lesser extent, "preventive" force) to ensure that criminals, as individuals, are punished for crimes they have committed.

War is the use of force against a collective group to kill them, enslave them, and/or to prevent them from attacking.

From this perspective, policing is targeted at individuals, and war is targeted at groups. And, from this perspective, the natural inclination is to condemn all wars because they kill innocent individuals. (As an aside, anyone who feels that wars are unjustified under any conditions ought to be a proponent of assassinations, as only individual leaders would then be killed -- and not their innocent subjects.)

The trouble is: What to do when a collective army decides to declare war on your country? Should your army only target enemy soldiers who are suspected of actually harming anyone -- perhaps after each enemy soldier is tried by a jury of his peers?

And what if civilians on the enemy side "get in the way"? Should your army accept casualties to defend the principle of not harming the enemy's civilians? How many soldiers on your side are worth the life of an innocent enemy civilian?

Four questions:

1. How much of an increased risk to your life (and to your children's lives) would you accept to ensure that your army doesn't harm any innocent people on the other side?

2. How much increased risk do you think your enemy's civilians would accept to ensure that you and your children are not harmed?

3. Would you now care to change your answer to Question #1?

4. If you just changed your answer to Question #1, how do you think that would affect the way your enemy's civilians might change their answer to Question #2?

Sometimes policing is more effective, and sometimes war is more effective. And even then, no one really knows the answer until after the conflict is over.

Mexico or Russia: Which is Poorer?

It's pretty close.

According to The Economist Pocket World in Figures (with the poorer country in bold)...

Male Life Expectancy: Mexico 73.7 Russia 58.7

Female Life Expectancy: Mexico 78.6 Russia 71.8

Adult Literacy: Mexico 71.9% Russia 99.4%

GDP per Head: Mexico $6,450 Russia $4,080

Unemployment: Mexico 2.5% Russia 7.8%

Inflation: Mexico 4.0% Russia 12.7%

Doctors per 1,000 People: Mexico 1.9 Russia 4.3

Hospital Beds per 1,000 People: Mexico 1.0 Russia 10.5

Color TVs per 100 Households: Mexico 90.5 Russia 75.2

Telephone Lines per 100 People: Mexico 17.2 Russia 27.5

Mobile Phones per 100 People: Mexico 36.6 Russia 51.6

Computers per 100 People: Mexico 10.7 Russia 13.2

Mexicans are less educated, and have fewer phones and computers. But Russians have less money and fewer TVs.

The interesting statistic (to me, at least) is how Mexicans have only half as many per capita doctors and one-tenth (!) as many hospital beds, but Mexican men live fifteen years longer than their Russian counterparts.

In any case, it's pretty easy to see what the future holds for both nations:

Mexican Birth Rate: 22.4, Mexican Death Rate: 4.5

Russian Birth Rate: 8.6, Russian Death Rate: 16.0

What Happened in Iraq?

Let's illustrate this with a story.

There was once a block with some pretty bad neighbors. One man in particular was pretty nasty; he looked creepy, he threatened people in the neighborhood, and regularly beat members of his family. Then one day, he started talking about how he would start killing people in the neighborhood. Worse, a cable installer noticed that the nasty man was accumulating lots of weapons, and was threatening to use them: Guns, poisons, and even grenades. The police were notified of this, and then one day, they invaded his house -- and though they do not harm him, or even arrest him, they did pulverize his weapons.

The neighborhood was able to rest a bit easier, but the nasty neighbor continued his ways of beating his family and threatening others. Then, one day, he rounded up some friends and they invaded other people's homes. In one instance, they settled in, and declared that the house and its property was theirs. The police were called, and the nasty neighbor was told to go home. Again, he was not arrested or harmed; he was just told to go home.

That worked to some extent, but he continued to beat his family and threaten others. He even murdered some relatives. The police, concerned about this, set up a monitoring station near his house so that they could observe him. They couldn't see much, but they were something of a deterrent. The nasty man was still behaving in a threatening manner, but the aggressiveness lessened.

A few years went by, and then, on one sunny morning, some other bad neighbors went on a sudden killing spree. They carjacked some vehicles by cutting open the throats of unsuspecting motorists, and gunned down people mowing their lawns, children playing in yards, and anyone else they happened to see. They finally rammed their cars into a shopping center, killing everyone in the stores, and themselves. And shortly afterwards, many people in the neighborhood died from a poisoned water supply, though no one was able to figure out how the water became tainted.

The nasty man celebrated. And, despite what just happened, continued to threaten his neighbors. But now, with the whole neighborhood being very jumpy, they wanted assurance that the nasty man was not accumulating weapons again. And so, the police knocked on his door, asking to inspect his house. His responded by shutting the door tight and telling them to go fuck themselves. But instead of forcing their way in, the police kept knocking and pleading with him to please allow them to enter so that they can be assured that he has no weapons.

This went on for months. The nasty man was allowing his friends and relatives to come and go, but would not let the police in. Then, one day, some less-favored relatives escaped and told the police that the nasty man was in fact accumulating many weapons. Finally, the police issued a warning to the nasty man: Let us in, or we'll come in. Then, after weeks of police department meetings, consultations with other police departments, neighborhood association meetings, and consultations with people in different counties, the police gave an ultimatum, and finally entered the house.

They discovered many corpses buried in the yard. And as they took the nasty man away, some relatives cheered, while others (perhaps with "battered wife syndrome") swore vengeance on the police and the neighborhood. The police were violently attacked, and killed their attackers. But others got away. And, worst of all, new relatives started appearing from other parts of the neighborhood and attacked the police. While the police were defending themselves, they also searched the house, but could not find any weapons beyond a few knives and a pistol or two. Some speculated that the weapons might have disappeared in the convoy of U-Haul trucks that would regularly come and go, but no one could prove it.

Not only were people in the Nasty Man's house attacking the police, but relatives and friends of the other bad neighbors came by to attack the police and threaten people in the neighborhood. Eventually, chaos ensued when the police were unable to tell who belonged in the nasty man's house, who was visiting, who was a threat, and who was not a threat. The police, with reinforcements from other counties, were already in the neighborhood, arresting the friends of the suicide crew in their homes, but even there, they could not tell who was a threat and who was not. The big picture: The police, apprehensive about arresting innocent people in the nasty man's house, instead became targets themselves. And the honest people in the neighborhood were still being threatened by friends of the nasty man, and friends of the bad neighbors.

And then something unexpected happened: The police from the other counties decided to leave. And people living in other neighborhoods and counties dropped their support for the honest people being threatened. Even worse: Many people in the neighborhood, who were the targets of the nasty man, who had neighbors and relatives murdered by the car-rental gang, and who were continuously being threatened, turned on their own police department. Rather than wanting the police to remove the threat to their lives, they instead wanted to the police commissioner to resign -- in fact, they wanted to fire him! They apologized to the other counties for causing trouble. They even went so far to say that the threats, the violence, and the murders in their neighborhood were the fault of the police commissioner.

While the police were standing by and being murdered by the bad people in the neighborhood, many law-abiding people went to the local precinct to protest. While the bad people in the neighborhood were threatening to take over their homes and kill them, too, these people cried that all would be better if the police just went back to the precinct house and did paperwork. And with police corpses being dragged out of the criminals' houses, these people kept insisting that they were protesting the police action to help the police; they insisted that they supported the police.

Eventually, a new nasty man, perhaps even nastier than the first nasty man, made himself known. He openly stated that he was building the most lethal weapons known to man, and that he intended to use them to wipe his neighbors off the map. "Imagine a world without my neighbors," he would say. And he would send his friends around town to murder people by firing at them from adjacent yards. And everyone else in the neighborhood responded by ignoring him, and getting angry at the police commissioner for thinking about how to respond. Many people in the neighborhood, and everyone in other neighborhoods, became obsessed with hating the police commissioner and also hating the few people in the neighborhood who realized that they were the targets of these threats.

The story ends, so far, with police still being killed in the nasty man's house -- and with apparently little inclination to enter the new nasty man's house.

Should Political Leaders have Military Experience?

The answer is clearly "yes" in countries like Pakistan, Venezuela, and Libya. In other countries, like The United States, the military reports to a civilian government; the generals follow policies that are legislated in Congress and executed by The President.

Some people ask: Shouldn't the children of The President serve in the military? The answer to that is "no", as The President's job is to put his nation first -- and not his parental obligations. That is, with his children in the army, there would be a conflict of interest that might be decided in favor of his children at the expense of the nation.

Why Does The World Hate America?

For the same reasons that they hate the Jews: A convenient target to scapegoat for their own (imagined) problems.

Here's a recent article from The Telegraph called Hatred of America Unites the World. Before you read it, look at our version below where we replaced "Americans" with "Jews". With some minor country-specific references that we deleted, and despite some statistics that are a bit off, it reads very well.

Americans are the New Jews.

Hatred of Jews Unites the World

By Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 25/02/2007

Being hated is no fun. Few of us are like those pantomime villains who glory in the hisses and boos of an audience. And few people hate being hated more than Jews. I wish I had a dollar for every time I've been asked the plaintive question: "Why do they hate us?" and another for each of the different answers I've heard. It's because of our foreign policy. It's because of their extremism. It's because of our arrogance. It's because of their inferiority complex. Jews really hate not knowing why they're hated.

But who hates Jews the most? You might assume that it's people in countries that Israel has recently attacked or threatened to attack. Jews themselves are clear about who their principal enemies are. Asked by Gallup to name the "greatest enemy" of the Jews today, 26 per cent of those polled named Iran, 21 per cent named Iraq and 18 per cent named North Korea. Incidentally, that represents quite a success for George W. Bush's concept of the "Axis of Evil". Six years ago, only 8 per cent named Iran and only 2 per cent North Korea.

Are those feelings of antagonism reciprocated? Up to a point. According to a poll by Gallup's Centre for Muslim Studies, 52 per cent of Iranians have an unfavourable view of Jews. But that figure is down from 63 per cent in 2001. And it's significantly lower than the degree of antipathy towards the Jews felt in Jordan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Two thirds of Jordanians and Pakistanis have a negative view of Jews and a staggering 79 per cent of Saudis. Sentiment has also turned hostile in Lebanon, where 59 per cent of people now have an unfavourable opinion of Jews, compared with just 41 per cent a year ago. No fewer than 84 per cent of Lebanese Shiites say they have a very unfavourable view of Jews.

These figures suggest a paradox in the Muslim world. It's not Jew's enemies who hate the Jews most, it's people in countries that are supposed to be Jew's friends, if not allies.

The paradox doesn't end there. The Gallup poll (which surveyed 10,000 Muslims in 10 different countries) also revealed that the wealthier and better-educated Muslims are, the more likely they are to be politically radical. So if you ever believed that anti-Western sentiment was an expression of poverty and deprivation, think again. Even more perplexingly, Islamists are more supportive of democracy than Muslim moderates. Those who imagined that the Middle East could be stabilised with a mixture of economic and political reform could not have been more wrong. The richer these people get, the more they favour radical Islamism. And they see democracy as a way of putting the radicals into power.

The paradox of unfriendly allies is not confined to the Middle East. Last week was not a good week for Jew-philes in Europe. Anti-Semitism is nothing new in European politics, to be sure, particularly on the Left. But there is something novel going on here, which extends to traditionally pro-Jewish constituencies.

Back in 1999, 83 per cent of British people surveyed by the State Department Office of Research said that they had a favourable opinion of Jews. But by 2006, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project, that proportion had fallen to 56 per cent. British respondents to the Pew surveys now give higher favourability ratings to Germans (75 per cent) and Japanese (69 per cent) than to the Jews - a remarkable transformation in attitudes, given the notorious British tendency to look back both nostalgically and unforgivingly to the Second World War. It's also very striking that Britons recently polled by Pew regard the Jewish presence in The Middle East as a bigger threat to world peace than Iran or North Korea (a view which is shared by respondents in France, Spain, Russia, India, China and throughout the Middle East).

Nor is Britain the only disillusioned ally. Perhaps not surprisingly, two thirds of Jews believe that Israel's foreign policy considers the interests of others. But this view is shared by only 38 per cent of Germans and 19 per cent of Canadians. More than two thirds of Germans surveyed in 2004 believed that Jewish leaders wilfully lied about the previous year's Hezbollah invasion, while a remarkable 60 per cent expressed the view that Jews' true motive was "to control Middle Eastern oil". Nearly half (47 per cent) said it was "to dominate the world".

The truly poignant fact is that when Jews themselves are asked to rate foreign countries, they express the most favourable views of none other than Britain, Germany and Canada.

Back in the 1990s, Madeleine Albright pompously called Israel "the indispensable nation". Today it seems to have become the indefensible nation, even in the eyes of its supposed friends.

There are, admittedly, a few scraps of good news in the international polls. There is overwhelming European opposition to Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons. And there is a surprising amount of hostility towards the Palestinian radicals of Hamas in both France and Germany. But look again at some of Jew's supposed allies. One in four Indians, two out of five Egyptians and one out of every two Pakistanis favour a nuclear-armed Iran. A third of Britons, half of all Indians and three quarters of Egyptians welcomed the success of Hamas in last year's Palestinian elections.

It's not for nothing that they say it's lonely at the top.

Was 9/11 an Act of Terrorism?

No, it was not.

Terror is used to frighten a population in submitting to one's demands, and has been used in varying degrees of success; e.g., the imposition of socialism in the Soviet Union, the IRA demands for a united Ireland, etc.

Although we read much about what the 9/11 "terrorists" want, this has been all speculation. In fact, the only demands have been the ever-changing items presented in the occasional Osama Bin Laden videos, all of which are beyond contemplation, let alone implementation. And other "terrorist" attacks (such as Bali, Madrid, London, Tel Aviv, etc.) had no accompanying demands at all.

The supporters of these attacks, however, have clearly stated that they wished to murder people. They have not expressed any desire to "terrorize"; they have only expressed a desire to kill.

In short, 9/11 and associated acts are not terror, but are just plain mass murder as an end in itself.