Now that it looks as if it is going to be an early night, back to business. Will these jihadists call off this effort in view of the looming new messianic era? Or will the world discover that the jihad doesn't abate because of Infidel manifestations of good will, but sees them as weakness and is only emboldened by them?
We shall see, won't we. Although I know already that no amount of empirical data will sway some people. And such people are found all across the political spectrum.
An update on this story. "Terrorists try to infiltrate UK's top labs," by Mark Townsend for The Observer, November 2:
Dozens of suspected terrorists have attempted to infiltrate Britain's top laboratories in order to develop weapons of mass destruction, such as biological and nuclear devices, during the past year.The security services, MI5 and MI6, have intercepted up to 100 potential terrorists posing as postgraduate students who they believe tried accessing laboratories to gain the materials and expertise needed to create chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, the government has confirmed.
It follows warnings from MI5 to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that al-Qaeda's terror network is actively seeking to recruit scientists and university students with access to laboratories containing deadly viruses and weapons technology.
Extensive background checks from the security services, using a new vetting scheme, have led to the rejection of overseas students who were believed to be intent on developing weapons of mass destruction. A Foreign Office spokesman said the students had been denied clearance to study in the UK under powers 'to stop the spread of knowledge and skills that could be used in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery'.
He added: 'There is empirical evidence of a problem with postgraduate students becoming weapons proliferators.' The overseas students, a number of whom are thought to be from 'countries of concern' such as Iran and Pakistan, were intercepted under the Academic Technology Approval Scheme, introduced by universities and the security services last November....
What's that? Postgraduate students? Don't they know that it's poverty that causes terrorism, and that therefore they should be anything but terrorists?
The findings raise questions over how many terrorist suspects may have already infiltrated the UK's laboratory network. Rihab Taha, dubbed 'Dr Germ', who worked on Saddam Hussein's biological weapons programme, studied for her PhD in plant toxins at East Anglia University's School of Biological Sciences in Norwich....
"He added: 'There is empirical evidence of a problem with postgraduate students becoming weapons proliferators.' The overseas students, a number of whom are thought to be from 'countries of concern' such as Iran and Pakistan, were intercepted under the Academic Technology Approval Scheme, introduced by universities and the security services last November...."
I'm surprised Western universities aren't given a thorough clean-out by the intelligence community because they're basically populated with radical leftist & Islamist ratbags. I know in Britain that they're great recruitment pools for wannabe terrorists.
After Gordon Brown's little visit to Wahhabi heaven, maybe the British authorities decided to make it a little easier for Brown's new "rehabilitated" terrorist friends to make good on their promise not to attack Saudi targets by helping them focus their jihad on infidel targets instead.
A posting from several months ago:
"[Siddiqui]who attended MIT as an undergraduate and earned her PhD in neuroscience at Brandeis.."
-- from the article above
There are entire fields that, I'm afraid, simply must be put off-limits, to the extent possible, to students from Muslim countries, and to Muslim students from anywhere. Will that be unfair to some? Yes. But it is impossible to figure out who is who, who thinks what, and who, if he or she is just fine now, will change in the future, possibly for reasons that are purely personal but, for Muslims, so often lead to a Return to Islam. That risk cannot be taken.
Already the Netherlands has decreed that no Iranian may study nuclear engineering in that country. The predictable protests led to nothing. That is a policy that needs to be extended, three ways:
1) the ban should include much more than "nuclear engineering" though that is undoubtedly the most important field of study to close to Muslim students. Ideally, such a ban will extend to most graduate training in other areas -- physics, chemistry, biology -- at for at that level it is more likely that sufficient knowledge will be acquired to be put, later, to sinister use.
2) the ban should include nationals of nations other than Iran, and be extended to Muslims living -- especially to Muslims living -- in Infidel lands.
3) the ban should go beyond the Netherlands and be put in force by all the Infidel nations.
Will anything like that happen?
No, of course not. But discussion, the mere discussion, of these proposals will lead some to realize, after their initial shock, that they are rational, not vindictive, and appropriate for the unprecedented threat, and the unprecedented circumstances, of having Infidels actually helping to train Muslims in fields that, for those Infidels, can turn out to be dangerous. Think of A. Q. Khan, learning enough in Dutch and German labs, just enough, to know what he had to steal and bring back to Pakistan.
There are ways to approximate, or to try to approximate, the kind of bans laid out above. It is likely to come to that. Too bad that time will pass, and unnecessary deaths occur, before Western and other governments come fully to their senses.
[Posted by: Hugh at August 12, 2008]