Terrorists in West Memphis? Arkansas Doctor Bombed

Dr. Trent P. Pierce, chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board, walked to his SUV today, then a bomb went off. The explosion could be heard a mile away, and dropped Dr. Pierce in a flower bed. He's pretty much in one piece, and has had SUV pieces taken out of him. He's in critical condition, though.

The big mystery is why somebody tried to shred the doctor.

Dr. Pierce is a family doctor, got listed as a co-defendant in a lawsuit but other wise seems well-liked. He's chairman of the state Medical Board, but there's no hot issue going on there right now.

Still, there might be someone peeved with Pierce because of his connection with an outfit that grants licenses for, regulates, and sometimes disciplines around :

• 8,000 doctors
• 3,000 therapists
• 400 osteopaths

But it's early days in the investigation.

A car bomb explosion critically wounded the head of the Arkansas panel that licenses and disciplines doctors, detonating in his driveway as he was leaving for work, authorities said.

Terrorist Attack?

A police official in West Memphis, Arkansas, said something that caught my ear:

"...'It's a terrorist attack on Dr. Pierce, and we just don't know why someone would do this,' the police chief, Robert Paudert, told reporters who gathered down the street from Dr. Pierce's house. 'We don't know if it was a random act, or someone specifically targeted him.'..." (The New York Times)

I think the police chief may be right, but just what sort of "terrorist" planted the bomb isn't at all clear. It could be an individual or group who doesn't like:

• Doctors
• People with brick driveways
• SUVs
  • The Doctor drove a Lexux hybrid SUV
• Arkansas state officials

At this point, there's no way to tell. The attack could even be Al Qaeda, or another Islamic terror organization, trying a new sort of terror attack.

I don't think so: but it's possible.

Shaking up a high-end neighborhood, ruining a perfectly good vehicle, and nearly killing a relatively minor state official doesn't have the headline-grabbing power of flying airliners into skyscrapers. But it might be seen as a way of making America's government officials edgy.

Targeting people doesn't always have the desired results. Al Qaeda in Iraq tried that a few years ago: firmly associating Islam with beheading in the minds of outsiders, and creating the Anbar Awakening in the process. Not one of Al Qaeda's shining moments.

At this point, I doubt that the bombing in West Memphis is part of a new strategy for the 'death to America' people. Dr. Pierce isn't the sort of high-profile target that Al Qaeda seems to prefer, and he isn't involved with national security in any obvious way.

Attack of the Killer Doctors?

Unless, of course, there's some conspiracy afoot to infiltrate Arkansas' health care system with doctor-terrorists who, at a pre-arranged signal, will poison their patients.

And, following the dramatic approach of many conspiracy theories, Dr Pierce had discovered the nefarious plan and was about to unmask the diabolical death-dealing doctors.

I don't think so, but it would make quite a story.

And, the idea of doctors being involved, in their professional capacity, as agents on the other side of the War on Terror isn't as outlandish as it may seem. More about that, at

• "A Better Class of Terrorist"
  (July 8, 2007)
• "Attack of the Killer Doctors: Not a Joke, Now"
  (July 4, 2007)
• "Doctors, Terrorists, and the Proletariat: What's a Person to Think?"
  (July 3, 2007)

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In the news:

• "Doctor in 'very critical' condition after Arkansas bombing"
  CNN (February 4, 2009)
• "Bomb Injures Arkansas Doctor"
  The New York Times (February 4, 2009)
• "Car Explosion Wounds Arkansas Medical Official"
  ABC News (February 4, 2009)
• "ATF: Explosive Device Found in Arkansas Doctor's Car After Blast"
  FOXNews (February 4, 2009)
• "UPDATE 3-Car bomb wounds Arkansas medical officia"
  Reuters (February 4, 2009)

Chantix and Veteran's Affairs: Who Needs Consent? We Got 'Em, Let's Dose 'Em

It looks like a Department of Veteran's Affairs drug test involving Chantix has been handled badly. And, it's getting into the news in a predictable way. Here's a sample:

Medical Experiment at Department of Veteran's Affairs, in the News

• "VA testing drugs on war veterans"
  The Washington Times (June 17, 2008)
  • "The government is testing drugs with severe side effects like psychosis and suicidal behavior on hundreds of military veterans, using small cash payments to attract patients into medical experiments that often target distressed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, a Washington Times/ABC News investigation has found.
  • "In one such experiment involving the controversial anti-smoking drug Chantix, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) took three months to alert its patients about severe mental side effects. The warning did not arrive until after one of the veterans taking the drug had suffered a psychotic episode that ended in a near lethal confrontation with police.
  • "James Elliott, a decorated Army sharpshooter who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after serving 15 months in Iraq, was confused and psychotic when he was Tasered by police in February as he reached for a concealed handgun when officers responded to a 911 call at his Maryland home...."
• " 'Wash Times': V.A. Using Iraq Vets as Guinea Pigs in Drug Tests "
  Editor & Publisher (June 17, 2008).
  • "NEW YORK As if the "soldier suicide" problem wasn't bad enough already, word has just emerged from ABC News and The Washington Times that our government is testing drugs with severe side effects, including promoting suicidal behavior, on hundreds of vets.
  • "In one case, the V.A. took three months to alert the veterans to the severe mental effects caused by one of the drugs, the controversial Chantix, used to halt smoking.
  • "They are even using cash payments to attract patients into medical experiments "that often target distressed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan," the newspaper puts it today....
• " 'Disposable Heroes': Veterans Used To Test Suicide-Linked Drugs"
  ABC News (June 17, 2008)
  • "Mentally distressed veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are being recruited for government tests on pharmaceutical drugs linked to suicide and other violent side effects, an investigation by ABC News and The Washington Times has found.
  • "The report will air on Good Morning America and will also appear in The Washington Times on Tuesday.
  • "In one of the human experiments, involving the anti-smoking drug Chantix, Veterans Affairs doctors waited more than three months before warning veterans about the possible serious side effects, including suicide and neuropsychiatric behavior...."
  • (A video clip is captioned "Mentally distressed veterans are recruited for questionable drug trial.")

Just keeps getting better, doesn't it?

From what I've read, this is a scandal, and an avoidable one. Ever since Chancellor Hitler and his massive reforms put medical experimentation on human beings into the spotlight, there's been little excuse for doctors to regard their patients as expendable experimental subjects.

A Lesson from Nürnberg: Get Informed Consent Before Experimenting on People

The so-called Nürnberg Code was supposed to give physicians guidelines about how to use people as guinea pigs. It didn't work quite as well as might have been hoped.

After the code was set up, America saw a number of more-or-less well-publicized lapses:

• Tuskegee syphilis experiment (1932-1972)
  Black men in in Macon County, Alabama, who had syphilis weren't treated
• Harold Blauer (1952)
  Mr. Blauer went to the New York State Psychiatric Institute for treatment of depression, was dosed with mescaline derivatives supplied by the U.S. Army Chemical Corps: then he killed himself
• High oxygen to premature infants (1953)
  Premature babies were exposed to high levels of oxygen: the doctor knew that it would probably cause blindness, and noticed their eyes swelling, but kept up the treatment anyway
• Injections of cancer cells (1963)
  Doctors wanted to know if cancer cells would thrive as well in patients who were debilitated by something other than cancer, as they did in debilitated cancer patients, so they injected cancer cells into patients who didn't have cancer - without telling them.
  • Ironically, this non-consensual research was done at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital. And: "Two years later, the American Cancer Society elected the principal investigator to be their Vice-President."
• Hepatitis in retarded children (1964+)
  The Willowbrook State Hospital in New York injected severely retarded children with hepatitis virus: as 'a vaccine against hepatitis.' True enough, survivors of the disease had an immunity.
• Cincinnati radiation experiments (1960-72)
  Blacks, again, and this time exposed to high radiation. For the U.S. military. Without their consent.
  Source: "Nonconsensual Medical Experiments on Human Beings" (copyright 1997 by Ronald B. Standler)

What's Going on Here?

Although half of the cases that Mr. Standler mentioned involved the American military, half didn't. I don't see these excesses of experimental enthusiasm from the fifties and sixties - or the current scandal at the VA - so much as a military problem, as a medical one.

People as Lab Animals: a Personal View

I will admit that I have a personal stake in the matter of medical experimentation. Please indulge me, with this account my own experience: it does tie in with this post's topic.

I was born in 1951. Shortly after that, the doctor my parents had trusted rotated my legs. It's a quite routine procedure, still used, to determine if there are any issues with the hip joints.

As soon as my legs flopped over, I screamed. The doctor made some remark to the effect of "that seemed to hurt."

Some time later I was diagnosed with congenital hip dysplasia. Non-surgical treatments were tried, but didn't work. Finally, after a best-try reconstruction of my left hip, it was obvious that I'd going to be at least semi-crippled for life.

My father was a librarian at a local college at the time. He was in the habit of taking a book or periodical at random from the shelves, to read during his shifts at the reference desk.

One day, he noted an interesting article in a medical journal. The title was something like "Consequences of Delayed Application of Treatment in Cases of Congenital Hip Dysplasia." The article, written by our family doctor, went on to describe how he had run across an infant with a bad case of congenital hip dysplasia.

What a lucky break! For the doctor.

'The top of my head blew off' - that's how my father, decades later, described his reaction to the article. Direct and passionate Irishman that he is, he wanted to go straight to the doctor for a frank and open discussion of the matter.

My Norwegian mother told him, 'no.' She went to the doctor's office, and discussed the matter with him. My mother is dead now, so we'll never know what she said.

Shortly thereafter, the doctor left his practice, on 'personal leave,' for an indefinite period.

In a way, it might have been more humane to have let my father unscrew his head.

Doctors: 'Medical Ethics' Shouldn't be an Oxymoron

Unhappily, using people as experimental subjects without getting their consent isn't the only problem we've had with doctors in my lifetime. Psychosurgery - slicing and dicing someone's brain to 'cure' moodiness, or some other inconvenient trait - was a sort of cure-all for a while.

I can remember when lobotomy was going out of fashion. We haven't heard about this charming practice for a while, but I see that it's coming back. At the risk of getting too far off-topic, I'll list a few lobotomy links, and move on:

• psychosurgery.org
  "Remembering the Tragedy of Lobotomy"
• "Portrayal of Lobotomy in the Popular Press: 1935-1960"
  "This study analyzed the content of popular press articles on lobotomy between the years 1935 and 1960...."
• "Lobotomy's back - controversial procedure is making a comeback"
  "In 1949 lobotomy was hailed as a medical miracle.
  "But images of zombielike patients and surgeons with ice picks soon put an end to the practice.
  "Now, however, the practitioners have refined their tools."
• And, last but not least, there's Dr. Walter "Icepick" Jackson Freeman II, who scrambled Rosemary Kennedy's brain, popularized the 'icepick lobotomy,' and did the same for about 2,500 other people in his energetic career.
  His contributions to society and medicine are covered online in
  • "The Lobotomist"
    PBS, viewable online
  • "The Lobotomist"
    By Jack El-Hai, an authoritative biography
    Chapter one available online, Mr. El-Hai hopes you'll buy the book

The point of that side-trip into slice-and-dice psychiatry is that doctors aren't necessarily right. That may seem obvious now, but back when Dr. Kildare (1961-1966), Ben Casey (1961-1966), and Marcus Welby, M.D. (1969-1976) were top-rated entertainment, many people really believed that doctors were somehow special. The problem was that some doctors seem to see themselves as a breed apart, higher beings who are beyond good and evil¹.

When people who are unencumbered by conventional morality, and believe that their quest for knowledge justifies breaking the rules, have the sort of power that physicians have, we've got trouble.

The current medical mess at the VA doesn't reflect too well on a bureaucracy-bound American military, but I think that the problem here isn't the military-industrial complex: it's another case of doctors who can't be bothered with rules.

More, at

• "Chantix, Human Lab Rats, and Business as Usual"
  (June 18, 2008)
• "Report: Veterans Participate in VA Drug Study With Little Warning"
  FOXNews (June 17, 2008)

---

¹(There's a pretty good summary of Nietzsche's book at sparknotes.com.

A Father Honors Fallen Son

The photo shows two Marines holding the United States Marine Corps flag against a wall. Under the flag are the words, "some gave all so others may live - USMC," and four names: Strain, Lucente, Stokes, and Krissof.

Those four were the war dead of Nevada County, California. "The Union" of Grass Valley, CA, shared information about Marine Lance Corporal Adam Strain, Marine Lance Corporal John Lucente, Marine 1st Lieutenant Nathan Krissoff, and Corporal Sean Stokes.

One of them, Marine 1st Lieutenant Nathan Krissoff, died on December 9, 2006, after a roadside bombing a roadside bombing in Anbar Province. Coping with his death wasn't easy for his brother, Marine 2nd Lieutenant Austin Krissoff, or his parents.Christine and Dr. Bill Krissoff.

"We are proud of him," Dr. Krisoff said in "The Union." "He believed in fighting terrorism. It was important to him. He was deeply affected by 9/11."

Marine 1st Lieutenant Nathan Krissoff's father thought for several months, about how he could best honor his son. On consideration, he decided that his best course was to join the United States Navy as a combat surgeon.

There was a problem: at 61, he needed an age waiver to join the service. His application's paperwork was moving slowly, at best, until August. That's when President Bush met with several families who had lost people in Iraq. Dr. Krisoff was there.

The president went around the room, asking if there was anything he could do. Dr. Krissoff remembers that when Bush got to him, "I said, 'Yah, there is one thing. I want to join the Navy medical corps and I gotta get some help here.' "

Three days later, the Navy called Dr. Krissoff. The paperwork was taken care of, and his waver was granted.

Bill Krissoff is a lieutenant commander, attached to the 4th Medical Battalion. He hopes to join a combat surgical team and serve in Iraq.

That may not be heroism, but I think it'll do until something better comes along.

Facts and photo link from:
"The Union"
"Marines honor local war dead"
"Soldiers' stories"
"Muskegon Chronicle"
"Father joins Navy to honor fallen son"

Related posts, on Individuals and the War on Terror.

Cool Heads, Lukewarm Brains, And Dr. Haneef

Dr. Mohammed Haneef, charged with owning a SIM card found in a burned-out jeep in Glasgow, is a free man. He left Australia for a "hero's welcome" in India after Australian Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews changed his mind about revoking Dr. Haneef's visa. The Aussie IM decided that Dr. Haneef's work visa would remained canceled.

Dr. Haneef's employer, Gold Coast Hospital, wants him back. They said that the doctor's job was waiting for him, if an outbreak of sanity occurred in the Australian Immigration Ministry.

Australian judicial authorities had a lucid moment last week, realizing that their case against the doctor was baseless.

Much to his credit, Australian Director of Public Prosecutions Bugg said that his office shouldn't have recommended charging the foreign doctor in the first place.

Australian authorities haven't come out looking all that competent in this caper. Even the arrest of Dr. Haneef, as he was leaving Australia to be with his wife and newborn daughter, probably wouldn't have happened if the good doctor hadn't called the police to let them know that he was leaving.

That call they paid attention to. The ones he had made, trying to clear up the mess, hadn't been returned.

I'm afraid that quite a few people in the Australian government should get some sort of award for their performance.

I suggest the creation of an award for the sort of outstanding law enforcement and jurisprudence displayed recently: the Keystone Cops Tinplate Slapstick; presented to deserving officials, for nitwittery above and beyond the call of nature.

Foolishness aside: Even though this exercise in lunacy has a guardedly happy ending, a bungled bit bureaucratic buffoonery like this is a very serious matter.

I'm acutely aware of how Dr. Haneef's rights were mis-handled. That shouldn't have happened, obviously. The good news here is that Dr. Haneef was able to clear his name quickly, unlike another sure-fire suspect, Richard Jewell, Dr. Haneef was not attacked by news media, and was able to clear his name quickly. (I bring Mr. Jewell up a lot in this connection, because I believe there are similarities in the way these two men were treated.)

Just as bad, perhaps worse, this get-the-foreign-doctor debacle makes it much easier for people to distrust the Australian government, and by extension all governments. People with the sort of power wielded by government officials are frightening when they turn their brains down to 'lukewarm.'

I hope that Dr. Haneef is allowed to work in Australia again, and that he is safe in doing so. It seems that Australia needs good doctors.

Perhaps the Australian Immigration Minister, if he decides to unrevoke Dr. Haneef's work visa, should consider encouraging foreign psychiatrists to work in Australia. Judging from the way so many officials acted in the Haneef matter, the psychiatrists would have no trouble finding work.

Posts on this topic:

• "Cool Heads and Terrorism Investigations: It Could be Worse"
  (July 27, 2007)
• "Lesson for Terrorism Investigators: Return Those Calls!
  (July 21, 2007)
• "Arrests, Doctors and Terrorists: Keeping a Cool Head
  (July 2, 2007)
  • My views on rational investigations and Richard Jewell

Information from FOXNews.com, "Doctor Gets Hero's Welcome in India

Cool Heads and Terrorism Investigations: It Could be Worse

Dr. Mohamed Haneef is off the hook, sort of. He's the doctor charged by Australian authorities with reckless support to a terrorist organization. That's pretty serious. If he'd been convicted, he could have been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Here's what he's supposed to have done:

• Let a second cousin use his SIM card
• Owning that SIM card when it got left in a jeep on the other side of the world
• Still being the SIM card owner when someone tried to use the jeep to torch an airport terminal

Sounds pretty trivial, put that way.

Dr. Haneef was freed today, after an Australian chief prosecutor said it was a mistake, charging him with being connected to the London/Glasgow car bombings in Britain.

The decision to release came after a review of the evidence by Australian Director of Public Prosecutions Bugg. After this review, Mr. Bugg found that his office should never have recommended charging Dr. Haneef. There's more at "Australia Drops Terror Charges Against Indian Doctor Accused in Failed U.K. Bombings Plot."

Mohamed Haneef isn't quite out of trouble yet.

This week's SNAFU is about Dr. Haneef's visa. It's been revoked. Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews, back when Dr. Haneef was an escaping fugitive (who had called the police to let them know he was leaving the country), revoked Dr. Haneef's visa. Now the Immigration Minister is pondering whether or not to change his mind.

Dr. Haneef has what I'd call a pretty good reason for wanting to leave Australia. His wife had a baby by C-section, and he wanted to be with her and their baby.

Ironically, 11 years ago today, a bomb went off at Atlanta's Olympic Park, the start of a really unpleasant part of Richard Jewell's life.

I hope that Dr. Haneef gets the right to get on with his life faster than Mr. Jewell did.

Posts on this topic:

• Cool Heads and Terrorism Investigations: It Could be Worse (July 27, 2007)
• Lesson for Terrorism Investigators: Return Those Calls! (July 21, 2007)
• Arrests, Doctors and Terrorists: Keeping a Cool Head (July 2, 2007) (My views on rational investigations and Richard Jewell)

Information from FOXNews.com, "Australia Drops Terror Charges Against Indian Doctor Accused in Failed U.K. Bombings Plot

A Better Class of Terrorist

Homicidal religious fanatics aren't intrinsically funny, but even amid the burning wreckage of an ancient religion and a Jeep Cherokee there's room for humor.

Many seem to be shocked at all the doctors and medical professionals associated with the London / Glasgow attacks of June 29 and 30.(I harangue about that in Doctors, Terrorists, and the Proletariat: What's a Person to Think?.)

Others have a more balanced view of the world. As someone from the Britain's Midlands wrote, "[I] think it just goes to show we seem to be getting a better class of terrorist over here at the moment."

Attack of the Killer Doctors: Not a Joke, Now

Those "who cure you will kill you" is what an Al Qaeda leader told Anglican cannon Andrew White, The Times (UK) reported.

That's part of a longer quote: "He talked to me about how they were going to destroy British and Americans. He told me that the plans were already made and they would soon be destroying the British. He said the people who cure you would kill you."

It's not unreasonable to think that what an Al Qaeda leader said "on the fringes of" a meeting on religious conciliation in Amman, Jordan, might have something to do with the car bombings in the United Kingdom a few days ago. The majority, at least, of the alleged perpetrators were doctors or medical professionals.

Why they tried a brute-force approach to killing infidels instead of something more sophisticated, I've no idea.

The Al Qaeda leader, a man in his forties who had traveled from Syria for the meeting, apparently said that both British and Americans would be targeted because of what those countries were doing in Iraq.

Cannon White didn't discover who, and what, he was talking to until the meeting was over. And he wasn't going to tell The Times. The Episcopal Cannon did say, "I met the Devil that day."

Back to the United Kingdom, the States, and Iraq. I can understand how someone with a moral code that allows him to try setting a nightclub full of women on fire might also want the United Kingdom and the United States to stop resisting his colleagues from establishing this moral code in Iraq.

That doesn't mean that I think it's a good idea to stop trying to set up an alternative to what the men of Islam's lunatic fringe want in Iraq, and the United Kingdom, and the States. I doubt that I could ever get used to flogging my wife or commit an honor killing when one of my daughters did something I didn't approve of.

About "Islam's lunatic fringe" - I should clarify that.

I am assuming that the 'death to the Jews! death to the Great Satan America!' people have the same relationship to Islam that, say, the KKK of the 1960s had to Christianity. I hope I'm right.

Doublethink, Doctors, and Dumb Ideas

An AP report on Breitbart.com says that all eight people arrested in connection with those car bombs in London and Glasgow had something in common. They were all current or former employees of the United Kingdom's National Health Service.

The article looks like level-headed reporting, and says that the official view in Britain is that, although the suspects are foreign-born, the plot was hatched in the United Kingdom.

"To think that these guys were a sleeper cell and somehow were able to plan this operation from the different places they were, and then orchestrate being hired by the NHS so they could get to the UK, then get jobs in the same area—I think that's a planning impossibility," said Bob Ayres, a former U.S. intelligence officer now at London's Chatham House think tank.

"A much more likely scenario is they were here together, they discovered that they shared some common ideology, and then they decided to act on this while here in the UK," he said. (Excerpt from Breitbart.com.)

Meanwhile, the Daily Express ("The World's Greatest Newspaper") has a much juicier article. It says, "Gordon Brown has banned ministers from using the word 'Muslim' in connection with the terrorism crisis.

"The Prime Minister has also instructed his team – including new Home Secretary Jacqui Smith – that the phrase 'war on terror' is to be dropped."

It seems that the new PM wants to avoid offending Muslims, adopting a more 'consensual' tone than existed under Tony Blair.'"

The Daily Express may have a slight bias, as evidenced by the headline "BROWN'S SECRET PLOT TO SHUT OUT THE TORIES (GORDON Brown is to step up his secret campaign to keep the Tories out of power for ever – by changing Westminster’s voting system.)"

Even so, I don't think they made up Mr. Brown's remarks.

I wish the new British hadn't banned that word and that phrase.

First, I don't recall bans on the word "Irish" when terrorists from one of my ancestral homelands were embarrassing me with their misguided, murderous attacks.

Second, I'm very uncomfortable with this sort of censorship. Although it isn't quite newspeak, it does take a bit of doublethink to talk about M***** terrorists without thinking about the W** ** T*****.

Plus, forbidding the use of terms which have obvious connection with what was probably behind the botched mass-murders at a nightclub full of women and an airline terminal puts massive amounts of fertilizer of the fields where conspiracy theories grow.

For example, isn't it obvious that Bob Ayres is wearing rose-colored glasses? There's a vast conspiracy in Great Britain! the United Kingdom's National Health Service has been infiltrated at the highest levels! Terrorists abound in England's hospitals! The Prime Minister is in on the plot!

Panic in the streets!!!!

No, I don't believe that: although I wouldn't be all that surprised to find out that the NHS has been paying more attention to ethnicity and diversity, and less to background and beliefs, than it should have been. Who knows, maybe there really is a plot.

On the other hand, maybe this has nothing to do with the suspects' religious beliefs.

Think about it: they all seem to be doctors or medical professionals. Maybe they were just trying to pick up business.

(No, I don't believe that either. But the human condition being what it is, I suppose I have to make that disclaimer.)

Doctors, Terrorists, and the Proletariat: What's a Person to Think?

Doctors and medical professionals being mixed up in the recent set of London-Glasgow car bombings seems to be confusing, at least to some in the news media.

I can understand that. White-collar professionals don't fit into the oppressed-poor / unworthy rich mental model that seemed to work so well with previous street-level terrorists.

When someone wearing explosive underwear was somehow related to poor people, the mass-murder-suicide perpetrator looked a lot like a revolutionary in the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

When a doctor pops out of a flaming jeep in an air terminal, things get complicated.

Doctors, as professionals, do fit into a Marxist scenario, either as Petit-Bourgeoisie or maybe part of the proletariat, since they do a kind of work.

On the other hand, since professionals, at least in the United Kingdom and the States, get paid for something that they presumably ought to do for free, they're guilty of Commodification ("the transformation of relationships, formerly untainted by commerce, into commercial relationships, relationships of exchange, of buying and selling"). That would seem to make them at least complicit in the oppression of the proletariat.

The suspects in the recent terrorist attacks seem to have Islam as a common thread. Religion has a place in Marxist thought, too, as "the sigh of the oppressed creature," so for people who didn't notice the end of the Cold War, the "struggle will continue between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie."

I'd say that it makes better sense to decide that what we have these days, after generations of the Cold War, is something new. Or, rather, something very old: religious fanatics who are convinced that it is their sacred duty to kill certain kinds of people.

Arrests, Doctors and Terrorists: Keeping a Cool Head

It hasn't been easy, trying to keep track of what's been going on with the British investigation of the London and Glasgow car bombs.

So far, the score seems to be eight arrests, of which anywhere between three and five were doctors. I don't blame the news services for being vague. This affair has been moving very fast.

So far, there seem to be four doctors who can be identified from the news reports:

• Dr. Mohammed Jamil Abdelqader Asha, a palestinian neurologist born in Saudi Arabia, with a Jordanian passport
• Dr. Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla, who was in the jeep with the jeep's driver
• A doctor who lived in Liverpool and worked at Halton Hospital in Cheshire, and who was from Bangalore, India
• A doctor at a Queensland state hospital, arrested at a Brisbane airport while trying to leave Australia. His name has been withheld by Australian authorities

The doctor in the Brisbane arrest was not an Australian citizen, according to Australian Attorney General Philip Ruddock.

The Indian doctor in Liverpool may be one of the unluckier people in the United Kingdom. He may have been detained because he had a mobile chip from, and was using the Internet account of, another doctor who had worked at Halton Hospital and had moved to Australia.

Was the former Halton doctor the same one who was arrested in Australia? Good question.

In Amman, Jordan, Dr. Asha's father told The Associated Press that his son isn't a terrorist. That's understandable. It may be true.

Fitting a familiar profile doesn't mean that someone is guilty. Back in 1996, a bomb at an Olympic Park party in Atlanta, GA, killed one person and injured more than a hundred.

Bear with me. This flashback to 1996 has a point.

Richard Jewell, the overweight white security guard who discovered an abandoned knapsack contained a bomb, and moved people away from it, seemed an ideal suspect. The Justice Department and Defense Department felt that the bomb could have been the work of a "nut case," or a militia group "gone bonkers," CNN reported on July 27, 1996. CNN's source said that this was a "gut feeling" coming from law enforcement's first look at what had happened, who had been there, and the pipe bomb that was used.

That "gut feeling" was quite natural. Many of the people at the Olympic Park were black. The guy who found the bomb was white. Suspecting him was, perhaps, quite natural. Other evidence pointing to Jewell included his allegedly owning a knapsack that looked like the one with the bomb, and allegedly saying "You better take a picture of me now because I'm going to be famous" (presumably said to witnesses who couldn't be found again). He even had been near a wooded area when his neighbor heard an explosion. Suspecting Jewell was perfectly natural. The FBI did the right thing by investigating him.

Although it might have been better to investigate others with equal zeal.

What happened in the news was something else.

Under the law, he was 'innocent until proven guilty,' but for 12 weeks he was the news media's Olympic Park Bomber. Suspected, but, you know, you've got to say "suspected."

Richard Jewell was cleared, and his innocence affirmed by the U.S. Attorney Kent Alexander, but not until his name and portly likeness had been thoroughly distributed around the USA.

That flashback to 1996 has a point. Here it is:

Considering what can happen in a fast-moving investigation, it's probably just as well that we don't have the names of all the people who have been arrested to date. There could be a Richard Jewell among them.

Information from The Independent, Fox News, CNN and The Muslim News.

New Opportunities in Terrorism: Fanatic Doctors

Two of the seven people arrested in the United Kingdom in connection with the weekend car-bomb attacks are doctors. Make that three of eight. Another arrest was reported while I was writing this.

SkyNews reports that one of the people in the flaming jeep that crashed through the front door of Glasgow's Blackpool airport the day before yesterday (Saturday, June 30, 2007) is Dr. Bilal Abdulla, a doctor at Royal Alexandra Hospital.

Another doctor, Dr. Mohammed Asha, was arrested on the M6 near Sandbach in Cheshire after British police raided his office.

As I wrote this, the arrest of a third doctor was reported.

Any one of these people may turn out to have nothing to do with the weekend effort to turn a nightclub and an airline terminal into infidel incinerators. It isn't easy to come up with an innocent explanation for Dr Abdulla being in Glasgow's rolling firebomb: at least not one that doesn't sound like it was made up by a defense lawyer from the States.

In fact, despite what British authorities have said, those car bombs may have been the work of misguided practical jokers or disgruntled soccer fans. That's not likely, though, judging from the way one of the Glasgow door-crashers kept shouting "Allah!" as authorities rescued him from the fire he set and the people who might have died with him.

However, assuming that the obvious explanation is the true one, at least one doctor is involved in the weekend's terror attacks. A doctor working as point man may bring the War on Terror to a whole new level.

To date, Islamic fanatics have blown people up, burned people alive, blown people up and incinerated the pieces, and, now and again, beheaded the odd infidel.

These are all brute-force methods of killing people.

Doctors have been connected with the War on Terror, or the War on the West, depending on your point of view, for years: Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and Dr. Amin al-Haq, for example.

Now, with doctors willing to get up close and personal, we could see a new kind of terrorist attack. Not being a medical professional, I don't know what a doctor with evil intentions in a hospital could do.

I came up with something psychoactive in the staff water cooler, or death by medication after about a half-minute's thinking: and I'd guess that a real doctor could come up with something much worse.

As Sherlock Holmes said, "When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of criminals. ...we shall have horrors enough before the before the night is over ...." ("The Adventure of the Scarlet Band" (1892) p. 270 in "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" (Doubleday & Company))