ENOUGH!

I traveled from San Francisco recently. I always am double checked because I have an implant in both my knee and my hip.
The female TSA agent asked me if I had read anything about the “new” procedures that had gone into use on Oct. 29. She then proceeded to check me and I mean check. Twice her had was at my crotch. I was very uncomfortable.
Since I am always checked I really do not want to go through that again. I don’t travel for business but do travel quite often for pleasure. Well. This wasn’t a pleasure.

Neopolitano’s response that people don’t have to fly is totally inadequate. While China is spending 100s of billions on high-speed rail to offer its citizens an alternative to flying (the distance from Chicago to New York takes 5 hours by high speed rail; DC to Orlando distance takes 4 hours), the US is doing NOTHING to give its people decent alternatives. We have been in a police state for years (having lived in Chile under the Pinochet government, I know what one feels like). It seems people in the US are finally waking up to this fact. I don’t particularly have a problem with the scan, but I do expect the US government to pay for ALL of my medical care if I become ill from anything that can be even remotely related to the radiation I received from the scans!

I’m Canadian, but I fly occasionally, to the US and elsewhere and I’ve been following for some time the posts and related comments about the TSA.

But somehow, after reading about the truly invasive body search that one particular traveller was forced to endure (Erin the $5 Dinner Mom, incident occurring Nov. 12/10) I just couldn’t resist finally making some general observations about the entire stream of comments that followed this particular post by Chris Elliot, and the attitudes revealed by some of the ensuing responders.

I find the residents of North America (Americans and Canadians) to be naive, to a surprising degree about their governments. The governments of both our once-great countries are not interested in the rights of their citizens; and by the way, to paraphrase what someone once observed, the inhabitants of jurisdictions who are as controlled by their governments as we are should more properly be considered SUBJECTS, not citizens!

The governments are not interested primarily in the welfare and well-being of their subjects; they are interested in CONTROLLING and MANIPULATING them!

The governments want to control and manipulate what their subjects eat and drink, what they read, and therefore(as far as possible) what they think and believe, and through this how they act and make the numerous daily choices of the actions in their lives, what they wear(to the extent possible), etc. And, of course, the governments are on a permanent mission to dig their greedy hands ever deeper and deeper into our pockets!

Occasionally, some incident like 9/11 will conveniently play into the hand of the governments to seemingly justify to their naive subjects the increasingly more draconian measures they impose upon them. Some of us have suspected that 9/11 was orchestrated by the US government itself to accelerate control measures and divert attention away from domestic problems to refocus on a common enemy. I personally don’t go that far, but it’s not inconceivable in principle.

All the comments about how the TSA and their ridiculous, inconsistent and ineffective measures(including scanners) and their search methods and arrogant and aggressive way of addressing and treating travellers are correct, but beside the point! All your rants and objections will change nothing. And as for appealing for government intervention about the TSA — they’re all in cahoots. Talk about sending the fox to guard the hen-house!

This is about CONTROL, nothing else! On a side-note, wait till you people experience the socialized so-called “health care” you’re about to endure, and the resulting tax impact upon you! How you let this character you elected to ram this through would make a good episode of “The Three Stooges”, if it weren’t so about-to-become-tragic. After enduring it for almost 4 decades, many Canadians would gladly scrap socialized medicare, if only we could!
Those of us with the means cross the border to the US for treatment in cases where the wait forced upon us by our medicare system would result(and too often has) in the DEATH of the patient waiting patiently(lol) for his turn. Where will Americans in distress go? To Mexico?! What a laugh! After the institution of medicare here, the wages and working conditions of Canadian doctors and surgeons deteriorated to the point that many of them left for the US, leaving us with a shortage. Where will the American doctors go? And how you guys even CONSIDERED VOTING FOR, never mind electing, a guy with a name like Obama(one letter away from Osama); I still marvel at Americans buying a vehicle with the acronym like KIA(killed in action) for a name. But I digress.

Wake up America! It’s long been too late for Canada, even if Canadians had the will and the testicular fortitude — we’ve long ago been emasculated!

At best procedures are inconsistent from airport to airport.

“Oh wait, I know, because they believe that only dark skinned folks are terrorists or have such leanings”

This is true… to a degree. I’m a white guy in his late 20′s, and so my ending up with random screening would not be questioned (although with these new pat down procedures, I would certainly balk regardless).

But grandma in the wheel chair receiving random screening? Give me an effing break.

Why are Americans so freaked out about scans? While I don’t want to do it either, if it ensures my safety and I can avoid a pat-down, it’s a small price to pay.

Okay, here’s a question. What about pregnant women? They recommend that there’s no safe level of radiation for a baby in utero. Are women going to have to lift up their shirts to prove they’re actually pregnant and not smuggling something under their shirts when they refuse to expose their child to radiation? Where to we draw the line?

@Brad: REALLY? You actually think this abuse is acceptable, and that people who disagree with it are “complainers”? I’d like to hear you say that to my mother.

My mother is 73 years old, has had a hip replacement and cement injected into her spine, and walks with a cane. Because of her metal hip, she is selected for the full pat-down every time she flies, even though she carries a card from her surgeon explaining the hip.

Last year we were on an international flight that changed planes in Atlanta, so we had to go through security to board our flight home. The line was unbelievably long, and we were unable to exit the crowded line to use the restroom or we would have had to go back to the end, and miss our flight. By the time we got up to security, my poor mother had to pee. Sure enough, she had to be “patted down” (aka sexually assaulted). They moved her over to a roped-off area, left her sitting there for 10 minutes, during which time of course she was unable to use the restroom.

By the time the woman came to pat her down, she was in severe distress, and her trousers were slightly damp in the middle. She begged the woman, a very large lady who looked like she’d spent the first half of her life running with the Crips and the second half as a prison guard, to let her use the ladies room. She refused, and began the molestation. When she shoved her hand in between my mother’s legs she started yelling at her, “Did you PISS ON ME????” Everyone started staring, and my mother began crying. I wasn’t even allowed to go anywhere near her.

It’s now over a year later, and she hasn’t flown since – which means she hasn’t been able to see her kids and grandkids, because it just doesn’t make financial sense to buy plane tickets for whole families (and put all the grandkids through the degrading trauma of air travel), rather than just her traveling here. So, she’s coming out here for Thanksgiving – but she is absolutely terrified of going through security.

Now I’d like to hear you tell my mother that she is nothing but a complainer, and she should stay home alone in Arizona and have Thanksgiving by herself. Go ahead. Say it to her.

Enough is enough. Airline travel is not safer because of airport security. It’s for the rest of us. Terrorists will find a way to get through if they want do. Airport security just makes fearmongers feel safer. It doesn’t actually prevent terrorism. Praying to G-d and treating people nicely is the best way to prevent death by terror.

“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” – Benjamin Franklin

So what was Benjamin Franklin is talking about in that quote? (The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, vol. 6, p. 242,) He was talking about a tax bill to buy arms and ammunition for protecting settlers from attacks by Native American Nations on the frontier of Pennsylvania, that the King’s Governor declined to put into law. (I am not going into how poorly the USA has treated Native Americans.) Is the TSA procedures violating Essential Liberties Franklin is talking about?

I see this quote used often and I wonder if people really understand the background of the quote.

The TSA and this administration is caught in a catch-22. If they relax the patdowns and full body scanning, and someone (whither a terrorist, a news organization or random blogger) brings something through, then they fail to secure the airport. Also if a terriorist does make it through then there is a good chance of people dying.

And if they don’t relax it the general public outcry will most likely legislate out their ability to do their job and someone will sneak something though and people could die.

So where do they go? People for years have complained that the TSA is not doing a good enough job to protect the airports and now that they put in technology and procedures to do it, people are complaining that they have gone too far.

Why is that 81% of people are in favor of full body scanners?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20022876-503544.html

It seems that there is a vocal minority trying to control the majority?