Flawed Intelligence
One of these dialogues ends with an intelligent and reasonable response, and the other one does not. See if you can tell which is which.
Dialogue A
"I think she's a terrorist."
"What's the evidence?"
"She looks a bit Muslim and she's reading a book about Syria."
"Right, when's she coming back? Two weeks? Call the police and tell them to send a squad to the airport. Well done for saving all our lives."
"Just being vigilant, Captain. Funny how these criminals always seem to make one small but fatal mistake, though."
Dialogue B
"I think she's a terrorist."
"What's the evidence?"
"She looks a bit Muslim and she's reading a book about Syria."
"Oh, shut up and get back to work."
In times of terrorist threat and swarming migrancy, the business of keeping calm and carrying on can occasionally be bent into some interesting shapes. A Thomson Airways cabin crew member, under instructions to "be vigilant", noticed a passenger reading a book called Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline, which is obviously just the sort of activity any terrorist would use as cover for a lifetime's aspiration to give Palmyra the shock-and-awe treatment. As a result of the crew member's vigilance, the passenger, a British NHS worker in child and adolescent mental health services, ended her honeymoon with a fifteen-minute interrogation from South Yorkshire Plod, who were kind enough to give her a copy of Schedule 7 of the Reverend Blair's Terrorism Act as a souvenir. Thomson Airlines appreciated that in this instance the passenger may have felt herself the beneficiary of an exercise in precautionary overcaution, but gave neither an apology nor any indication as to whether it considers reading a legitimate cause for concern; or, if it does, whether Schedule 7 of the Reverend Blair's Terrorism Act has a place on the airline's Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It also remains unclear whether the passenger is, as the phrase often has it after the blood-spattered terrorist fact, "known to security services". After all, her job includes anti-radicalisation work, which would arguably be an even better veil for her natural Muslim instincts than the act of reading.
Dialogue A
"I think she's a terrorist."
"What's the evidence?"
"She looks a bit Muslim and she's reading a book about Syria."
"Right, when's she coming back? Two weeks? Call the police and tell them to send a squad to the airport. Well done for saving all our lives."
"Just being vigilant, Captain. Funny how these criminals always seem to make one small but fatal mistake, though."
Dialogue B
"I think she's a terrorist."
"What's the evidence?"
"She looks a bit Muslim and she's reading a book about Syria."
"Oh, shut up and get back to work."
In times of terrorist threat and swarming migrancy, the business of keeping calm and carrying on can occasionally be bent into some interesting shapes. A Thomson Airways cabin crew member, under instructions to "be vigilant", noticed a passenger reading a book called Syria Speaks: Art and Culture from the Frontline, which is obviously just the sort of activity any terrorist would use as cover for a lifetime's aspiration to give Palmyra the shock-and-awe treatment. As a result of the crew member's vigilance, the passenger, a British NHS worker in child and adolescent mental health services, ended her honeymoon with a fifteen-minute interrogation from South Yorkshire Plod, who were kind enough to give her a copy of Schedule 7 of the Reverend Blair's Terrorism Act as a souvenir. Thomson Airlines appreciated that in this instance the passenger may have felt herself the beneficiary of an exercise in precautionary overcaution, but gave neither an apology nor any indication as to whether it considers reading a legitimate cause for concern; or, if it does, whether Schedule 7 of the Reverend Blair's Terrorism Act has a place on the airline's Index Librorum Prohibitorum. It also remains unclear whether the passenger is, as the phrase often has it after the blood-spattered terrorist fact, "known to security services". After all, her job includes anti-radicalisation work, which would arguably be an even better veil for her natural Muslim instincts than the act of reading.
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