Large Hadron Collider Scientist Arrested For al-Qaeda Ties 245
mindbrane writes "A scientist working as a subcontractor on a peripheral LHC project has been arrested as a terrorist. The CBC is running a story outlining the arrest of a man on Thursday in south-east France for suspected al-Qaeda links: 'CERN officials said the man, whose name has not been revealed, was working under contract with an outside institute and said he had no contact with anything that could have been used for terrorism. He had been at CERN since 2003, officials said. ... The news that someone with terrorist connections might have worked at the facility is likely to cause concern because of both the high profile of the giant physics experiment and also the technology in use, which has made some members of the public nervous.'"
Disbelieve (Score:2, Interesting)
Evil to level 11 !! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Disbelieve (Score:3, Interesting)
How do you kick ass of an organisation that didnt exist in first place?
if you tell a lie often enough....
Re:Disbelieve (Score:5, Interesting)
And I thought the al quaeda BS would finally stop (Score:4, Interesting)
you know the literal translation of the word "terror" from latin is "fear" and a "terrorist" by definition is someone who makes you afraid. some people make you afraid by crashing planes or detonating bombs in your country or by sending you terror-threat videos. some people make you afraid by constantly telling you there was a bogeyman that is about to kill you - using his weapons of mass destruction unless we start a war etc.
wake up! your own government and your own media terrorize you far worse than al quaeda ever did! If you run scared everytime someone says "bogeyman", then the terrorists have won, because you are scared and THAT is exactly what they WANT
Re:better safe than sorry (Score:3, Interesting)
Talking about black holes of information, where did the French secret service get the supposed "evidence" for this supposed list of EU terrorist targets - if there is any? Certainly not off napkin scrawls hidden under the guys bed. Perhaps it was by the normal channels: beating, starving, electrocuting, mauling with dogs then stringing to the roof [wikipedia.org] some Afghan peasant/soldier in a one of the many private corporate run prisons [telegraph.co.uk] they got set up down there and around the world until he muttered "Mohammad, list of targets, France... lllllhhhhhcccc*gasp*" ?
OR is this story just about yet another Orwellian military/police state shadow organization trying to justify they are not a *big* part of the "let all hate each other" problem?
Fscked if we will ever know, the story in all its lack of credibility is out there now and its purpose served. Slashdot only managed to scape it up, make it even worse on details or open to questions of credibility than it already was to begin with. Journalist bloggers wanting to be taken seriously, indeed.
Re:Six degrees of separation (Score:2, Interesting)
To be pedantic, that is true unless there is an isolated cluster of humans and the most likely case that would happen is if there is an undiscovered (by someone in the spanning cluster) and isolated civilization somewhere. Also, the six degrees of separation is the average path length and not the diameter of the network. Nevertheless, six degrees of separation is an excellent argument against suspecting people solely due to association with "terrorists."
Re:But i thought... (Score:5, Interesting)
More seriously, Obama winning the prize reflects poorly on the Nobel committee, not on him.
I worked in a pizza place where the manager had an interesting strategy for improving the performance of some employees. He would give a particular employee, who'd been slacking, the Employee of the Month Award. Getting this award would often encourage that employee to pick it up, and they'd become diligent enough to deserve the award. Maybe the Nobel committee is hoping for the same effect here? They gave a Peace prize to Yasser Arafat some time ago as well, as I recall.
Re:Disbelieve (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not worried until somebody is busted for being tied with Al Qaeda in the sixth degree.
It's also fun to note that, under the Kevin Bacon scheme, George W Bush and Osama bin Laden have only one degree of separation. They have both been together in not just one, but two movies. Those movies were documentaries, of course, but that's a trivial detail that wouldn't stop any journalist from saying that they are "linked".
One of the movies was Micheal Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11". I've forgotten the other one and I don't have time right now to google it. Maybe someone else knows. And there well may be several other movies that they share by now.
Re:so you don't have to DO anything anymore? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the articles I've seen about it, he was arrested for communicating the will to commit terrorist acts and had been seeking advice and information on doing just that. He was effectively at the very start of the planning stage.
Make of that what you will, if they have evidence of intent he could well be a dangerous person.
It really comes down to what evidence they really did have, and what was included in those communications for which he was arrested.
The problem is, you and I don't know what evidence they actually do have, and unless we do we can't say if the arrest was justified or not so it seems pointless speculating. If he was picked up simply out of paranoia because he was phoning uncle Abdullah in Pakistan then yeah, it's rediculous. If he was however phoning Mr Mehsud of the Taliban and asking for information producing bombs from house hold material and information on which targets Al Qaeda would most like him to blow up and what kind of casualty figures they were looking for then it's a different story.
It's a shame it rarely ever comes out what their evidence actually was so we can properly check the validity of arrests like this.