ON THE VIRG: December 2006

"Fadil Bayyari and Jeremy Hess laid the groundwork a few weeks ago for Bayyari, a Muslim, to build a new home for Temple Shalom, Fayetteville's Jewish congregation. . . .The coming together of faiths often pitted against one another wasn't lost on either. . . Bayyari, a Springdale general contractor, will donate his services to Temple Shalom . . .The symbolism of the men working together is more significant than bricks and mortar, temple president Bill Feldman said. Bayyari and Feldman agreed demonstrating the positive side of Muslim-Jewish relations is important locally and internationally. Bayyari said he approached Hess through a friend in the local Rotary Club about lending his services. He said he thought it would be an important way to show his support. Bayyari previously built a mosque for Fayetteville's Muslim community.‘We are all children of God when you look at it,’ Bayyari said. Feldman said members of Temple Shalom were ‘thrilled’ to work with Bayyari, in order to demonstrate similarities in the two religions." Temple Unites Faiths, Jewish congregation "thrilled" to work with Muslim contractor on new building By Dug Begley The Morning News

Thanks To Jim, the Buddhist, for this ecumenical tip.

"Even assuming, for just a moment, that previously banned, but now "legal" fingernail clippers could ever have been used to hijack a plane, the current version of airport security would still be worthless. (The fact that almost anyone with a pulse can even now successfully get a deadlier weapon than a pair of nail clippers on a plane is just an example of the lunacy.)

A primary problem is that airport treats what is a symptom while never addressing any root causes. Simply put, for increased security to preclude subsequent attacks, ineffective security must have led in part to the previous attacks. Direct causality has to exist between security and terrorism for increased security to result in decreased terrorism. But people who obeyed the existing rules carried out those attacks. Their weapons were not hidden, and their identification was not invalid. Thus, bending me over and checking me very thoroughly for weapons is unlikely to help. Worse, looking at the 9/11 attacks, the simplest logical analysis yields another firm conclusion: the methodology used to take over those planes on that day will never work again anyway. . . .
Somewhere in the offices of DHS right now, execs are gathered around a conference table, doing shots of Jack, laughing: "Hey Bill, let's make them take off their shoes!" "That’s too funny!" "Hey, why not dial up the metal detector to catch underwire bras?" "Wow, I wish I could film that scene!" "Hey, I’ve got one. Let’s ask them if they packed their own bag or let some unknown person pack it for them. Terrorists never pack their own bags!" "Ooooh, good one!" It’s a veritable laugh riot.
And just to be very clear, when I assert that terrorists around the globe know that a similar plan to that implemented on 9/11 will never work again, I am not talking about the really smart terrorists. A terrorist with only the mental capacity to avoid soiling himself occasionally during a typical day could have reached this conclusion. If such a person could actually get to the airport on time, he would have reached the upper limit of his capability." From, Do You Know the Way to San Jose? Hidden in Plain Sight, Part First by Wilton D. Alston