Eric rants appropriately on one of the most disgraceful features of today’s American life, one earlier generations of Americans would never have put up with for a minute.
It makes you wonder: when did the people of this country become so European-style obedient, domesticated, and emasculated?
Heimatsicherheitsdeinst (literally, Homeland Security) and TSA have nothing to do with “catching terrorists†and everything to do with habituating people to arbitrary authority and routine degradation by government goons – so as to make them feel the same way that prisoners feel – I get the deer-in-the-headlights face from most of them.
I then go on to ask them whether they think it is beyond the means and capabilities of real “terrorists†to charter a plane. As Eric remarks, today you could tell them to climb into the train car headed for the extermination camp, and just about all of them would.
The whole thing is absurd – and evil almost beyond words. Perhaps the worst part is the willing complicity of so many people – from the TSA geeks themselves (no one puts a gun to their head; they could seek honest work that didn’t involve treating their fellow Americans like cattle on the way to Treblinka – and that’s no coincidence, either) to the people who don’t have to fly to keep their jobs/feed their families – but do it anyhow. If even 10 percent of “optional†flyers had refused to fly until the TSA was abolished, the TSA would be abolished. But most people will not inconvenience themselves in the least to take a stand for the right thing.
Michael Yon has a classic example of the spectacular-stupidity-and-inflexibility-of-the-TSA genre.
A note [from retired Marine and 3-star General Mick Trainor recently] appeared on a private message board. This private group includes many current and former generals, and just about anyone you see on television or in books as a national security specialist, ranging from CIA to all the top war correspondents, special operations types galore, and high-level policy makers. There is significant education value in just reading their traffic. …
“Did you use hand cream this morning?â€
“Yes,†I replied, “Why do you ask?â€
“Because there is a trace of nitrate on your hands. That is not uncommon with some hand lotions. Nitrate is an element of explosives.â€
“OK,â€.I thought. “I have soft hands, but not a bomb.†Notwithstanding such logic, I was informed that I would have to have a full body search. With that two agents escorted me to a private room while other agents began to tear apart my luggage.
“Is this really necessary?†I enquired. “I’m an eighty four year old, native born American citizen who spent forty years in the Marines and fought in two wars and retired as a general.â€
“Oh, you were a Marine.†said one agent. “My father-in-law is a retired Marine colonel of about your vintage. His name is Webster. Did you know him?â€
“I knew a Charlie Webster, who went as ‘Chuck.’ We went through Quantico together as new lieutenants.â€
“That’s him.†replied my interrogator ….. as he proceeded with the full body search.
Not quite as bad as the 2002 shakedown of 86-year-old WWII hero and former South Dakota governor Joe Foss, during which TSA personnel failed to recognize and tried to confiscate his Medal of Honor, but very bad. Story here.
Anybody know the name of that “private message board?”
The nincompoops in Norfolk, Va claimed the six shooter design constituted a “replica” and was therefore prohibited. The poor girl missed her flight home to Jacksonville, Fl, and wound up being put on a flight to Orlando. All over a decorative element on a purse.
Newt Gingrich ought to start promising to eliminate the TSA.
A TSA inspector was moved by something he saw in a young lady’s luggage to leave her a note of encouragement.
Alarmed at potential bad publicity from the victim of this intrusion’s tweet, TSA removed the employee responsible from screening operations and issued an apology. TSA Blog
So, the moral is evidently that it’s ok if low-grade rent-a-cops paw through your underwear and unmentionables, as long as they refrain from sharing their glee at what they get to see with you.
Amy Alkon forwards a comment that followed Time magazine’s coverage on the TSA of the elderly leukemia victim’s diaper search which should make every Americans’ blood boil.
Question: What kind of a man knowingly surrenders his own daughter to one of us government workers to be molested, standing by passively even as her private parts are fondled while she screams “Daddy Daddy, please help me!”
Answer: an American man.
I speak only to you men when I say you gutless cowards will be lining up to hand over your wives and daughters in our airports, it will happen hundreds of time each day across our USA. You had better start explaining to your children that we government employees are allowed to touch their private parts whenever we want; it will make the whole thing a lot less dramatic. Seriously, the 1st time is always the worst. The next time you get molested will not feel as disturbing as we accommodate you to our abuses.
-Ksiadz_Robak
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Claire Berlinski quotes an anecdote from the Istanbul daily Zaman that also speaks volumes about what has happened to the citizens of the United States.
Something happened when I was at Atatürk Airport on my way to Beirut. We, as the passengers going to Beirut, were called to the gate for our flight. We went through security and boarding was supposed to begin but, just a few minutes before takeoff, the gate was changed. At the new gate, the security check started again and the officials did not even start the second X-ray machine for us, nor did they apologize.
Then the protest of the passengers started. Some passengers, including me, started to clap our hands in a peaceful manner and demand an apology. Then, at that moment, I noticed that the only passengers who were protesting the situation were Turks.
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Claire then states aloud what should have been obvious to everyone in the United States a long time ago.
I do think the American public’s collective willingness to go along with what any thinking person can see is a ritualized, invasive, offensive, time-wasting and humiliating farce is a very bad omen about our political culture.
It’s alarming both because there should be some kind of enraged reflexive reaction–“Hey, we shouldn’t put up with this, this is insane!”–and there just isn’t. Most people seem willing just to submit to it; the objections to these practices seem to be confined to the political periphery. Is there a single 2012 candidate who has made this a campaign issue? Why not?
And it’s alarming because it suggests no one party to this farce can think his or her way out of a paper bag. To see a stunning lack of common sense, on this scale, and to see a national willingness to believe that somehow it must all make sense and we should just trust the people who say it does–well, that’s really disturbing.
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It used to be possible to look at the events of the 1930s and 1940s in Europe, and think to oneself: “It could not happen here. Americans are not as domesticated as Europeans, not so habituated as Europeans to responding with kadavergehorsam (“corpse-like obedience”) to any edict of the Leviathan state. Americans are rugged individualists who would pick up their deer rifles and shoot some Stormtroopers, instead of obediently shuffling onto the cattle car going to the concentration camp.”
News10 (Sacramento) has a pretty outrageous story of official misbehavior on the part of the authorities.
An airline pilot is being disciplined by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for posting video on YouTube pointing out what he believes are serious flaws in airport security.
The 50-year-old pilot, who lives outside Sacramento, asked that neither he nor his airline be identified. He has worked for the airline for more than a decade and was deputized by the TSA to carry a gun in the cockpit.
He is also a helicopter test pilot in the Army Reserve and flew missions for the United Nations in Macedonia.
Three days after he posted a series of six video clips recorded with a cell phone camera at San Francisco International Airport, four federal air marshals and two sheriff’s deputies arrived at his house to confiscate his federally-issued firearm. The pilot recorded that event as well and provided all the video to News10.
At the same time as the federal marshals took the pilot’s gun, a deputy sheriff asked him to surrender his state-issued permit to carry a concealed weapon.
A follow-up letter from the sheriff’s department said the CCW permit would be reevaluated following the outcome of the federal investigation.
The YouTube videos, posted Nov. 28, show what the pilot calls the irony of flight crews being forced to go through TSA screening while ground crew who service the aircraft are able to access secure areas simply by swiping a card.
“As you can see, airport security is kind of a farce. It’s only smoke and mirrors so you people believe there is actually something going on here.”
Neither of these news organizations bothered to supply a link to the original video. YouTube searches are not turning it up so far. I’ll keep looking and post it when I find it.
Nate Anderson shares a story from a flyers’ forum that occurred in 2009.
I’m in line at Terminal E’s main TSA checkpoint at IAH [Houston’s main airport] and there are two gentlemen about 10-12 spots in front of me in line wearing kilts. No one is actually paying them much extra attention (and I have seen men in kilts before at IAH and other US airports) and we all continue toward the belts/bins… One of the “kilted” men was chosen for a random (as he did not alarm) secondary it seems; they had “placed†him into their magic plexiglass cube of indignity to do the pat down. Here is where it gets funny. I wait by the belt and slowly put my shoes on so I can hear and watch some of the fun.
The TSOgre says immediately, and I quote EXACTLY, “Why you wearin’ a skirt, bro?” The kilted traveler just kind of stood in a stunned silence. The TSOgre proceeds to pat the front and back of the torso down but then stops at the waist and calls a supervisor. Mister pay band F supervisor shows up and the TSA’s finest continue to chat about how to pat down the lower body. The line lackey TSOgre suggested the gentleman raise his kilt (no, I am not kidding…), to which the band F supervisor actually says, “That is not a good ideaâ€. At this point the other kilted man had put his shoes back on and walked away and I had to go as well. When I left the kilted traveler was laughing and in good spirits.
TSA chief John Pistole recently drew the line at cavity searching airline passengers, explaining erroneously to the gaping idiots in the lamestream press that the terrorist would have to be carrying a detectable external detonating mechanism, and our current gropings and electronic strip searchers would find that.
Terrorists could, of course, conceal a radio-transmitting detonator in more or less any object. But, why worry about cavity bombs when al Qaeda is being reported to be making plans for surgically-implanted infernal devices.
Jihadis bent on concocting a “new kind of terrorism” are brainstorming how to surgically implant explosives to make undetectable Frankenbombers.
“What is your opinion about surgeries through which I can implant the bomb …inside the operative’s body?” an apparent mad surgeon recently asked an online forum used by Al Qaeda affiliates.
He called on bombmakers and doctors to cook up the perfect solution to murder “larger numbers of unbelievers and apostates.”
“I am waiting for the interaction of the experienced brothers to connect the two sciences together and produce a new kind of terrorism, Allah willing,” he wrote, according to a translation by terror experts at the SITE Intelligence Group.
The scheming comes amid controversy over body scanners and pat-downs in airports that some Americans complain are too invasive. The ideas for a “surgically booby-trapped martyrdom seeker” were chillingly concise for the doctor of death monitored by SITE.
Stitching a bomb into the abdominal cavity made of plastic or liquid explosives – such as semtex or PETN – was judged the best method.
“It must be planted near the surface of the body, because the human body absorbs shocks,” advised one terrorist.
Ron Ross, at the American Spectator, vents over the insanity of our government’s refusal to use profiling as the basis for airline security.
The Transportation Security Administration’s controversial passenger screening policies demonstrate just how distorted our priorities have become. We have maneuvered ourselves into being more terrified of being accused of racism than we are of death.
Political correctness is the equivalent of a societal lobotomy. Political correctness prevents us from using basic logic and common sense when we make large and small choices. We know what we need to do to make ourselves safer but we’re in denial about what we know.
As John Smith, a columnist for Las Vegas Review-Journal, asked in a recent column, “Patting down my disabled daughter makes us safer?” The answer to that question is no, and everyone knows the answer is no. The obvious absurdity of our policies is the backdrop of why so many travelers are frustrated and angry.
How ridiculous is it to pretend that all passengers have an equal probability of carrying weapons or explosives? Our rejection of profiling is a rejection of behavior that we use so much we lose sight of how essential it is in our lives. The TSA is behaving as if there are no outward signs of a passenger’s likelihood of committing a terrorist act.
Our policy makers are pretending that probability is irrelevant in making choices and designing policies. Taking into account probability is second nature to any normal person. If probability didn’t matter, you might as well go fishing on dry land as on a lake or river.
When we refuse to consider probability we severely reduce the probability of achieving our objectives—in this case preventing the violent deaths of innocent people. Refusal to consider probability in making choices is a symptom of insanity. A strong intuitive sense of probability is an indicator of intelligence.
Political correctness is making us look like fools who don’t even have an instinct for self-preservation.
