[Peace-discuss] fourth amendment, and more, violated.

C. G. Estabrook galliher at illinois.edu
Wed Nov 24 00:41:28 CST 2010 

Mort, are you really urging acceptance of the following?

       TSA Gestapo Empire
       Paul Craig Roberts
       Nov 23, 2010

It doesn't take a bureaucrat long to create an empire. John Pistole, the FBI 
agent who took over the Transportation Security Administration on July 1 told 
USA Today 16 days later that protecting trains and subways from terrorist 
attacks will be as high a priority for him as air travel.
It is difficult to imagine New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped 
on crowed subway platforms or showing up an hour or two in advance for clearance 
for a 15 minute subway ride, but once bureaucrats get the bit in their teeth 
they take absurdity to its logical conclusion. Buses will be next, although it 
is even more difficult to imagine open air bus stops turned into security zones 
with screeners and gropers inspecting passengers before they board.
Will taxi passengers be next?  In those Muslim lands whose citizens the US 
government has been slaughtering for years, favorite weapons for retaliating 
against the Americans are car and truck bombs. How long before Pistole announces 
that the TSA Gestapo is setting up roadblocks on city streets, highways and 
interstates to check cars for bombs?
That 15 minute trip to the grocery store then becomes an all day affair.
Indeed, it has already begun. Last September agents from Homeland Security, TSA, 
and the US Department of Transportation, assisted by the Douglas County 
Sheriff's Office, conducted a counter-terrorism operation on busy Interstate 20 
just west of Atlanta, Georgia. Designated VIPER (Visible Inter-mobile Prevention 
and Response), the operation required all trucks to stop to be screened for 
bombs. Federal agents used dogs, screening devices, and a large drive-through 
bomb detection machine. Imagine what the delays did to delivery schedules and 
truckers' bottom lines.
There are also news reports of federal trucks equipped with backscatter X-ray 
devices that secretly scan cars and pedestrians.
With such expensive counter-terrorism activities, both in terms of the 
hard-pressed taxpayers' money and civil liberties, one would think that bombs 
were going off all over America.  But, of course, they aren't. There has not 
been a successful terrorist act since 9/11, and thousands of independent experts 
doubt the government's explanation of that event.
Subsequent domestic terrorist events have turned out to be FBI sting operations 
in which FBI agents organize not-so-bright disaffected members of society and 
lead them into displaying interest in participating in a terrorist act.  Once 
the FBI agent, pretending to be a terrorist, succeeds in prompting all the right 
words to be said and captured on his hidden recorder, the "terrorists" are 
arrested and the "plot" exposed.
The very fact that the FBI has to orchestrate fake terrorism proves the absence 
of real terrorists.
If Americans were more thoughtful and less gullible, they might wonder why all 
the emphasis on transportation when there are so many soft targets.  Shopping 
centers, for example. If there were enough terrorists in America to justify the 
existence of Homeland Security, bombs would be going off round the clock in 
shopping malls in every state. The effect would be far more terrifying than 
blowing up an airliner.
Indeed, if terrorists want to attack air travelers, they never need to board an 
airplane.
All they need to do is to join the throngs of passengers waiting to go through 
the TSA scanners and set off their bombs. The TSA has conveniently assembled the 
targets.
The final proof that there are no terrorists is that not a single 
neoconservative or government official responsible for the Bush regime's 
invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and the Obama regime's slaughters of 
Pakistanis, Yemenis, and Somalians has been assassinated.  None of these 
Americans who are responsible for lies, deceptions, and invasions that have 
destroyed the lives of countless numbers of Muslims have any security 
protection. If Muslims were capable of pulling off 9/11, they are certainly 
capable of assassinating Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Libby, Condi Rice, 
Kristol, Bolton, Goldberg, and scores of others during the same hour of the same 
day.
I am not advocating that terrorists assassinate anyone. I am just making the 
point that if the US was as overrun with terrorists as empire-building 
bureaucrats pretend, we would definitely be experiencing dramatic terrorist 
acts. The argument is not believable that a government that was incapable of 
preventing 9/11 is so all-knowing that it can prevent assassination of 
unprotected neocons and shopping malls from being bombed.
If Al Qaeda was anything like the organization that the US government claims, it 
would not be focused on trivial targets such as passenger airliners. The 
organization, if it exists, would be focused on its real enemies. Try to imagine 
the propaganda value of terrorists wiping out the neoconservatives in one fell 
swoop, followed by an announcement that every member of the federal government 
down to the lowest GS, every member of the House and Senate, and every governor 
was next in line to be bumped off.
This would be real terrorism instead of the make-belief stuff associated with 
shoe bombs that don't work, underwear bombs that independent experts say could 
not work, and bottled water and shampoo bombs that experts say cannot possibly 
be put together in airliner lavatories.
Think about it.  Would a terror organization capable of outwitting all 16 US 
intelligence agencies, all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel's 
Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, air traffic control, the Pentagon, 
and airport security four times in one hour put its unrivaled prestige at risk 
with improbable shoe bombs, shampoo bombs, and underwear bombs?
After success in destroying the World Trade Center and blowing up part of the 
Pentagon, it is an extraordinary comedown to go after a mere airliner.  Would a 
person who gains fame by knocking out the world heavyweight boxing champion make 
himself a laughing stock by taking lunch money from school boys?
TSA is a far greater threat to Americans than are terrorists. Pistole has given 
the finger to US senators and representatives, state legislators, and the 
traveling public who have expressed their views that virtual strip searches and 
sexual molestation are too high a price to pay for "security."  Indeed, the TSA 
with its Gestapo attitude and methods, is succeeding in making Americans more 
terrified of the TSA than they are of terrorists.
Make up your own mind.  What terrifies you the most.  Terrorists, who in all 
likelihood you will never encounter in your lifetime, or the TSA that you will 
encounter every time you fly and soon, according to Pistole, every time you take 
a train, a subway, or drive in a car or truck?
Before making up your mind, consider this report from antiwar.com on November 
19: "TSA officials say that anyone refusing both the full body scanners and the 
enhanced pat down procedures will be taken into custody. Once there the 
detainees will not only be barred from flying, but will be held indefinitely as 
suspected terrorists . . . One sheriff's office said they were already preparing 
to handle a large number of detainees and plan to treat them as terror suspects."
Who is cowing Americans into submission, terrorists or the TSA Gestapo?
------------------
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of 
policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an 
editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, "How the Economy Was Lost: 
The War of the Worlds," details why America is disintegrating.


On 11/23/10 11:34 PM, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> Estabrook and Johnson are clearly not travelling by airplane this weekend.
>
> Castigating the ACLU (which, perhaps not incidentally, supports a woman's 
> right to choose whether to continue a pregnancy) for telling people what they 
> can legally do and expect is abject, but to be expected from this quarter.  I 
> suppose they would spit in the eyes of the TSA types if they were trying to 
> board a plane. Easy to be brave from the far sidelines.
>
> --mkb
>
>
>
> On Nov 23, 2010, at 10:02 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> Count on good liberals to knuckle under and advise acquiescence when the 
>> government says it's serious.
>>
>> People who urge serious opposition are excoriated with stupid phrases like 
>> "Planet Wingnut."
>>
>> With advice like this, it's hardly surprising that Americans can't muster the 
>> sort of opposition that we see in France, Germany, or even the UK.
>>
>> On 11/23/10 7:03 PM, Robert Naiman wrote:
>> > Advising people what their
>> legal rights are does not equal telling
>>
>> > them to submit, except on Planet Wingnut.
>>
>> >
>>
>> > On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 6:49 PM, E. Wayne Johnson
>> <ewj at pigs.ag>
>>
>> > wrote:
>>
>> >> The Orwellian lock-step Democrats seem to be offering a
>> united
>>
>> >> front of pathetic submission to the Invasion of the Body
>> Snatchers
>>
>> >> at TSA.
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> Even the generally sassy FireDogLake is advising people
>> to submit.
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> Jane Hamster is offering not the 4th amendment: The right
>> of the
>>
>> >> people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and
>> effects,
>>
>> >> against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
>> violated,
>>
>> >> and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
>> supported by
>>
>> >> Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the
>> place to be
>>
>> >> searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> FDL is advising people to "Know your Rights" (in other
>> words, No
>>
>> >> Rights)
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >>
>> http://static1.firedoglake.com/1/files/2010/11/KnowYourRights-full.jpg
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> Bless their cowardly little hearts.  May their chains rest lightly upon
>> >> them.
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> My take on this matter is that any response to TSA that
>> is milder
>>
>> >> than at minimum a very polite "Fuck You! You're not going
>> to do
>>
>> >> it!" is an egregious and embarrassing surrender.
>>
>> >>
>>
>> >> Wayne Johnson
>>
>>
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>
>
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