The rhetoric of national security in the USA and the UK now eerily echoes the Stalinist rhetoric about the Doctors' Plot, except this time the alleged poisoners of the health of the state are not Jewish Zionist doctors but Muslim Islamist ones.
The end of habeas corpus has come not through anticommunism but Islamophobia, which most liberals and leftists of the West are unable to counter because their estimation of Muslims is not all that different from the general public's and at the bottom of their hearts they fear Islamism more than imperialism. If anything, what some of them say about Islam and Islamism aggravates Islamophobia that already exists. Even those who manage to recognize the need to combat Islamophobia tend to feel comfortable only with leftists who are from predominantly Muslim nations but are militantly secular and _think just like them_, not actual practicing Muslims some of whose ideas and customs offend them.
The only consolation is that liberals and leftists today are doing marginally better for Muslims than they did for the Japanese in the days of internment, who just couldn't get any help at all from the then largest political current on the Left.
But this time it will be more difficult, perhaps impossible, to re-establish habeas corpus, for the "war on terror" will last much longer than WW2. This is the new Cold War, in which Islamists are the new Communists, all Muslims their suspected fellow travelers, and occasional anti-imperialists and civil libertarians "useful idiots," the cold war in which many socialists and communists, especially those in governments of the West, support centrists with whom they cohabit against the real and imagined enemies of the US-led multinational empire.
It will be a war fought on all fronts, from education to health care, not just actual war, criminal justice, and immigration.
The Americans couldn't overcome anticommunism, so they lost a chance to enjoy social democracy, succumbing to the Red Purge _just when the Europeans, even the British, were instituting socialized medicine_, as shown in Sicko. If they can't overcome Islamophobia, they will lose forever the tradition going back to Magna Carta, whose most valuable legacy was habeas corpus.
<http://in.today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-07-04T212306Z_01_NOOTR_RTRMDNC_0_India-283197-1.xml&archived=False> Central riddle in British bomb plot: why doctors? Wed Jul 4, 2007 9:24 PM IST138 By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - The most striking question about a suspected Islamist militant plot in Britain is also one of the most puzzling: why were all of the suspects medics?
Two Indians and six Arabs arrested over two failed London car bombs and a botched attack on a Scottish airport all had connections to the medical profession. They included at least four doctors: two Indians, an Iraqi and a Jordanian, whose wife is also one of those held.
Police have up to four weeks to question them and none has so far been charged with any offence.
Security sources do not entirely reject, but describe as "highly speculative", the possibility of a "sleeper" cell of al Qaeda operatives, infiltrated into Britain using their trusted profession as the perfect cover.
But if that were the case, they say, why not exploit their expertise directly to mount an attack, perhaps involving bioterrorism or access to radiological material?
The then-head of Britain's MI5 intelligence agency warned last November that future security threats "may include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials and even nuclear technology".
But there is no suggestion such materials featured in the current case.
"There seems to be no terrorist gain from their profession," one security source said of the investigation into the two crude but potentially viable car bombs and the ramming of a fuel-laden jeep into an airport terminal in Glasgow, Scotland.
He said it was possible the suspects had met and become radicalised after their arrival in Britain.
"It could be they simply met in a professional capacity and had similar ideas and views," said Henry Wilkinson, an analyst at consultants Janusian Security Risk Management, noting past militant cells have often involved groups of friends or peers, of whom one emerges as the dominant influence.
Experts said that even if medical knowledge was irrelevant to this plot, the idea that Islamist militants could infiltrate Britain's health system would alarm the security services.
"Doctors are ideally placed to have easy access to chemicals, biological and even radiological material," said M.J. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London.
"If all of these doctors are involved in this cell, that is very disturbing. That is a new dimension entirely for the security services."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he had asked Britain's new counter-terrorism minister to carry out an immediate review of recruitment to Britain's National Health Service, where nearly 40 percent of doctors are foreign-trained.
But analysts said the need for improved screening extended to other sensitive professions such as airline pilots and people working in critical areas of national infrastructure.
"This is very hard to do. How do you screen people for their political beliefs? Obviously it's very controversial as well, but there is clearly a threat here," Wilkinson said.
<http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL0336389420070703> "Doctors' plot" breaks homegrown British pattern Tue Jul 3, 2007 9:13AM EDT
By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - The alleged role of Arab and Indian doctors in what British authorities are calling an al Qaeda-linked plot marks a contrast with recent conspiracies led by homegrown radicals, often with modest academic backgrounds.
Experts said the differences underline the impossibility of constructing a profile of a "typical" Islamist militant.
All eight people detained so far in connection with two failed London car bombs and a botched attack on a Scottish airport are doctors or have links to the medical profession, security sources said.
Two -- including a man detained in Australia -- are from India, and the rest from the Middle East including doctors Bilal Abdulla, who qualified in Iraq, and Mohammed Asha, a Jordanian.
Asha had been in Britain since 2004, according to his father, and newspaper reports said Abdulla arrived last year. None of those held has been charged with any offence, and police have up to 28 days to question them.
The possible involvement of foreigners in a suspected Islamist plot in Britain would not be new -- in April 2005, for example, Algerian Kamel Bourgass was convicted of a plot to launch attacks with poisons and bombs. Six men of African origin are now awaiting verdicts in another terrorism trial.
But other recent investigations have focused mainly on long-term residents or British citizens, like the four young Muslim men who blew themselves up on London underground trains and a bus two years ago this week, killing 52 people.
The MI5 intelligence agency has focused intensively on homegrown radicals in a rapid expansion which has nearly doubled its size since 2001. It has opened a series of regional branches to keep tabs on an estimated 1,600 militant Islamists it suspects of plotting attacks in Britain or overseas.
NO PATTERN
The current case showed how difficult it is to try to pinpoint suspects before they strike.
"The pattern is, there is no pattern," said one security official, denying that the strengthened domestic focus had distracted authorities from looking at non-British nationals.
"We don't view individuals on the basis of their ethnicity or origins, we view them on the intelligence basis of what they're up to."
The focus on Middle Eastern and Indian suspects may mark a break with other recent British cases which have repeatedly featured links to Pakistan. In at least three plots, leaders had traveled there to train in al Qaeda camps or seek approval from Osama bin Laden's network for proposed attacks in Britain.
No link to Pakistan has yet emerged in the latest case, which is also unique for another reason -- the medical background of all the suspects.
But the source said medical expertise did not appear central to the plot, and it was "entirely speculative" for media to suggest they formed an al Qaeda sleeper cell smuggled into Britain using their profession as the perfect cover.
International experience shows a wide variety of people may be drawn to militant Islamism, from drifters and petty criminals to affluent individuals and those with university backgrounds.
"It's not a surprise that educated people become part of these networks. I think it's a complete stereotype that these people are deprived, uneducated, people below the average income line and so on," said Peter Neumann, security analyst at King's College, London.
"What we've seen in the past is quite a number of people especially from the hard sciences -- chemistry, physics, doctors, engineers. Mohamed Atta, the guy who was planning September 11, was an urban planner." -- Yoshie