TSA Groping Out Of Control

Will TSA Groping Destroy Tourism In The United States?

The American Dream
Nov 22, 2010

One of the things that has not been considered in the debate over the horrific new TSA security procedures is the economic impact that all of this is going to have.* The rest of the world is watching what is going on, and millions of people are going to decide that they simply do not want to go through the hassle of flying to the United States.* There are some cultures where allowing a strange person to touch your private areas is unthinkable.* In 2009, 54.9 million tourists visited the United States, and those tourists spent approximately 93 billion dollars.* That doesn’t even count all of the internal tourism in the United States which is far greater.* Tourism is the first, second or third biggest employer in 29 U.S. states.* So what happens if a significant chunk of tourists decide that they are simply not going to fly because of the new full body scanners and the new “enhanced pat-downs”?

In our obsession with “underwear bombers”, we could literally kill the goose that killed the golden egg.* The United States is still one of the favorite destinations in the world for tourists, and many areas of the country are highly dependent on tourist dollars.* So are we willing to take a hit to our economy that could reach into the tens of billions of dollars just so that we can all feel slightly safer from “underwear bombers”?

Even before these new security procedures were implemented a lot of tourists were already staying home or avoiding having to fly because of our ridiculous air security system.

According to a 2008 survey, air travelers in the United States avoided 41 million trips because of perceived problems with the air travel system.* The U.S. Travel Association says that those avoided trips cost U.S. airlines 9.4 billion dollars.

So how damaging to our economy will all of these new security procedures be?

The truth is that the rest of the world is watching what we are doing.

They are watching as little boys at U.S. airports.

They are hearing the reports that TSA officials are actually reaching up the skirts of female passengers and slamming their hands into their private areas.

Thanks to the Internet, they are reading all of the worst TSA horror stories.* For example, one 61-year-old retired special education teacher was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an “enhanced pat-down” went badly.

That doesn’t exactly scream “welcome to America” now does it?

The TSA is literally taking a sledgehammer to our tourism industry.* They are going to cost us tens of billions of travel dollars.* These are tourist dollars that our economy desperately needs.

But even more horrifying is what all of this says about how far America has fallen.* We are rapidly becoming a Big Brother police state where average citizens are routinely treated like dehumanized prison inmates.

It is a national disgrace and the rest of the world is watching all of this.* Barack Obama and many of our other top politicians continue to stand up and defend all of this abuse by TSA officials.* They are making us look like scum to the rest of the globe.

Unless the American people stand up right now and refuse to accept these ridiculous new security procedures the rest of the world will never look at us the same way again.


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Body scanner CEO accompanied Obama to India

Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
Nov 22, 2010

The CEO of one of the two companies licensed to sell full body scanners to the TSA accompanied President Barack Obama to India earlier this month, a clear sign of the deep ties between Washington politicians and the companies pushing to have body scanners installed at all US airports.

Deepak Chopra, chairman and CEO of OSI Systems and no relation to the New Age spiritualist, was one of a number of CEOs who traveled with the president on his three-day trip to India, which focused primarily on expanding business ties between the US and the emerging Asian power.

“I am honored to be selected to play a role in this very important cause,” Chopra said in a statement ahead of the trip. “Currently the trade between US and India is only one tenth of the amount of trade between US and China. There is substantial opportunity to improve the trade relations with India for mutual economic gain.”

Chopra’s company manufactures the Rapiscan brand of body scanners, currently being deployed across US airports. He joined the CEOs of such companies as GE, PepsiCo and United Technologies on the trip.

Full article here

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TSA now needs false flag security incident to convince Americans to accept obscene pat-downs

Mike Adams
Natural News
Nov 22, 2010

With the grassroots backlash over the TSA’s obscene pat-downs growing by the day, it’s becoming fairly obvious that the only way the U.S. government is going to get the public to accept these Fourth Amendment violations is if there is another “terrorist incident” that’s stopped by the TSA and its naked body scanners.

So far, the TSA is molesting children, teens and grannies without being able to demonstrate that this gross violation of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights is having any effect whatsoever on improving air travel safety. But if there’s anything to be learned from 9/11, it’s that the sheeple are always willing to give up their rights if they can be scared into doing so. (http://www.naturalnews.com/030452_R…)

“After 9/11 people were scared and when people are scared they’ll do anything for someone who will make them less scared,” said Bruce Schneier, a Minneapolis security technology expert, in an AP story (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101121…). “But [this TSA] is particularly invasive. It’s strip-searching. It’s body groping. As abhorrent goes, this pegs it.”

TSA is fighting for its survival

The TSA is being threatened right now in a big way: One airport in Florida is already planning to ditch the agency and hire private contractors to run security. A NYC lawmaker has called for the “dismantling” of the TSA, and Rep Ron Paul has introduced legislation that would result in TSA agents being arrested for felony crimes if they touched peoples’ junk.

The TSA, in other words, is fighting for its very survival right now. What it desperately needs is some new terrorist incident to remind the American people how much they need to give up their freedoms in exchange for security.

Now, I’m not saying the TSA is going to plot to blow up an airplane or anything, but if there’s anybody who has the access to sneak something past airport security, it’s the TSA.

How false flag operations achieve government goals

The United States government has a long and detailed history of “staging” events in order to sway public opinion. The Gulf of Tonkin event in the Vietnam War era was deliberately staged by U.S. government officials in order to justify an escalation of military attacks on the North Vietnamese. Documents that were finally declassified just this year prove beyond any doubt that the U.S. government conspired to stage this “false flag” event. (http://www.prisonplanet.com/de-clas…)

Operation Northwoods was a similar plot. As Wikipedia relates:

The planned 1962 Operation Northwoods plot by the U.S. Department of Defense for a war with Cuba involved scenarios such as hijacking or shooting down passenger and military planes, sinking a U.S. ship in the vicinity of Cuba, burning crops, sinking a boat filled with Cuban refugees, attacks by alleged Cuban infiltrators inside the United States, and harassment of U.S. aircraft and shipping and the destruction of aerial drones by aircraft disguised as Cuban MiGs. These actions would be blamed on Cuba, and would be a pretext for an invasion of Cuba and the overthrow of Fidel Castro’s communist government. It was authored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nixed by John F. Kennedy, came to light through the Freedom of Information Act and was publicized by James Bamford. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_…)

On the conspiracy theory front, there have long been accusations that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job” staged as a pretext to clamp down on Americans’ freedoms and roll out the Patriot Act — the very law that coincidentally gives TSA agents the right to have anybody arrested and detained for 48 hours without cause, without a warrant and without legal representation. The evidence surrounding the collapse of the WTC 7 building now has literally thousands of engineers, scientists and citizens realizing the building was obviously brought down by demolition explosions (http://buildingwhat.org) and not an “office fire” as was the official explanation.

The point of all this is that when governments are cornered but don’t want to give in, they will sometimes resort to falsifying events in order to continue moving their agendas forward. As David Icke explains, it’s the old “problem-reaction-solution” approach. First, create the problem, then wait for the public reaction that allows you to enact the government solution.

The formula works like a charm for everything from pushing flu vaccines to justifying a war.

In fact, there is evidence that U.S. agents may already be working on this plan. The fake bomb recently found on board a German passenger jet, we now know, was manufactured by a U.S. company (http://www.prisonplanet.com/fake-bo…).

How government agencies keep themselves alive (and get more funding)

Is the TSA at that point of desperation yet? I’m not sure, but it would certainly be easy for high-level TSA operatives to find some patsy who hates the government, convince him that he should carry some liquid explosives onto an airplane, and then “catch” him at a TSA security checkpoint, thereby proving that we need to keep giving up our freedoms in the name of security.

The mainstream media would have a field day with that story, and for the next two weeks on the news, we’d all hear how important the TSA is and what a great job they’re doing, and how this “terrorist” was caught by the naked body scanner machine, and so on.

Don’t be surprised to see such a scenario unfold. It’s not that I personally distrust the TSA in particular, because there are some good people who work there and who are not to blame for all this, but at the same time I’ve been around long enough and studied enough true history to know that government organizations will do practically anything to stay in power.

The DEA, for example, is desperately fighting against marijuana legalization not because marijuana is some highly dangerous drug (it isn’t), but because it’s job security for DEA agents.

The CDC, likewise, went completely out of its way last year to spread fear about the H1N1 Swine Flu for the same reasons: Job security. There’s nothing quite like declaring a stage-six pandemic to keep the Congressional funding flowing your way, huh?

The CDC also has a fascinating history of completely distorting the AIDS epidemic in order to boost its own funding, by the way. Watch this eye-opening video from House of Numbers to learn more: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=4FE73…

Every government agency — the TSA, CDC, FDA, USDA, FTC and so on — fights for its survival every year. That’s because in an era of budget cuts, every agency knows it could potentially be on the chopping block for severe cuts. And funding cuts translate into job losses. So the unspoken rule at all government agencies is to “make ourselves important” in order to keep the money flowing.

This is also why the food contamination scares have been hyped up beyond all reason over the last two years: The FDA wants new powers to control the food supply, and the best way to do that is to latch onto stories about e.coli and salmonella and blow those all out of proportion in order to pass reactionary legislation called Senate Bill 510 (http://www.naturalnews.com/030461_S…).

The truth about this food safety situation is that right now something like 80% of the chickens sold in grocery stores are contaminated with salmonella (http://www.naturalnews.com/021258.html), yet you don’t hear a peep about that story. And the FDA is making no effort whatsoever to “ban chicken meat” from grocery stores. Their fear mongering about food contamination is very selective, it seems.

Perhaps the TSA has been learning its lessons from the FDA. Simply stage a false flag attack and you, too, can have increased Congressional funding to “fight terror” or whatever.

We do need protections, but we need our rights even more

All this isn’t to say that America doesn’t have enemies who really do want to destroy us. It’s true that there are really bad people out there — people and groups who want to bring America down.

There are some good people in Washington who are fighting for our safety behind the scenes. Yes, the FBI, CIA and NSA all have “a few good men” who are doing things around the world that you and I don’t even want to know about. Stuff that would make you cringe if you knew about it.

The sacrifices being made by some of these individuals in the name of protecting America’s interests on the international stage will never be fully known, nor recognized by anyone in the mainstream. The everyday American people who go about their lives shopping, watching TV, collecting a paycheck and surfing the ‘web have no idea what goes on behind the scenes to give them the luxury of pursuing such a carefree lifestyle.

That’s why nothing I print here is intended to disrespect the front-line warriors who are fighting for America’s interests — soldiers, the few “good” feds, etc. But at the same time that there are some “good men” (and women) in these agencies, there are also some rotten apples (like in any organization, I suppose). There are some people working in the government who absolutely would not hesitate to stage a false flag attack if it meant increasing their power, their pay and their importance.

And those people must be scratching their heads right now, thinking, “Gee, it sure would be easy to pull off a staged event of some kind that keeps us all in power.”

I just hope they come to their senses and realize they should not be at war with the American people. They’re supposed to be fighting to protect our freedoms, not to take away our freedoms. The real war is with the true enemies of America — those state-sponsored terrorist groups that genuinely want to destroy America and everything it stands for.

Certainly, we must not let the terrorists win. But neither must we allow freedom to perish in the process.

Reasonable security is fine

As a freedom-loving American who values both my freedom and my safety, I will gladly submit to having my luggage X-rayed and walking through a metal detector. I will gladly sit beside an armed Air Marshal on the flight, captained by an armed pilot on the flight deck who hopefully has a couple of spare mags along with his Colt 1911, too (pilots carry firearms on airplanes right now, most people don’t even know..).

Yet as much as those security precautions seem reasonable, I refuse to subject myself to a body X-ray that emits ionizing radiation, and I refuse to give in to an obscene pat-down that involves government personnel feeling up my genitals, with or without a latex glove.

At that point, “security” has become tyranny. And the terrorists have already won.

We need to rise up and stop this. Just as some of our undercover federal agents (and active soldiers) are fighting for America’s interests overseas, you and I need to be fighting for our freedom right here at home, on American soil, with this airport security issue.

We are not subjects. We are not cattle. We are sovereign citizens and we will not surrender our bodies to be fondled by government agents with the excuse that “it’s for our own good.”

And be on the watch for a “staged” security event designed to convince the American people that they need to give up yet more freedoms in the name of police-state security. I’m willing to bet that precisely such a plot is on the drawing board in Washington D.C. right now.


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Beck: Obama Will Blame Terror Attack On TSA Resistance

Fox News host warns that administration is preparing to exploit event to squelch resistance to airport security

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, November 22, 2010

In little noticed comments made during an appearance on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show on Fox News, Glenn Beck warned that the Obama administration wouldn’t hesitate to exploit a terror attack targeting airliners to blame the event on people protesting naked body scanners and TSA groping in airports.

The Fox News host said that the government was deliberately provoking the American people to rise up so they could squelch the growing resistance with an iron fist, noting that Obama has failed to give a single speech addressing the TSA revolt even amidst the biggest holiday travel period of the year.

“Let’s get people to rise up and say no scanners….something happens, the President then has the ability to finally give a speech on airport security and say ‘I was trying to protect you and these people stood up against these scanners, and these people died because of it….you have to stop listening, I’ll protect you,” said Beck, implying that the Obama administration would exploit a terror attack to blame it on those protesting against scanners and TSA groping in airports.

Beck added that people in the Obama administration were probably having casual conversations surrounding the potential of a terror attack targeting airline travel along the lines of, “Gee, it wouldn’t be so bad, would it?”

Beck made similar comments earlier this month when he suggested that the Obama administration was preparing to stage an event that would be blamed on opponents of big government.

Discussing how leftists need violence to realize their political agenda, Beck featured a clip in which former Clintonite and Democrat operative Mark Penn said Obama needs an OKC bombing-style event to regain his popularity.

“Remember, President Clinton reconnected through Oklahoma, right?” said Penn on Chris Matthews’ Hardball show. “And the president right now seems removed. It wasn’t until that speech [after the bombing] that [Clinton] really clicked with the American public. Obama needs a similar” defining moment, according to Penn.

As we have documented, Penn is not the only prominent insider to invoke exploitation of terror as a means of reinvigorating the big government agenda. Back in July, former senior advisor to President Bill Clinton Robert Shapiro wrote in the Financial Times that only an OKC bombing or 9/11 style event could provide Obama with the opportunity to demonstrate that he is a strong leader.

After reading a letter written by Tides CEO and founder Drummond Pike that encouraged advertisers to boycott Fox News in a thinly veiled threat that implied Beck’s rhetoric is leading to another OKC bombing, Beck stated, “They are setting up an Oklahoma City, they are claiming that one is coming and they’re already marked the one who caused it,” referring to himself.

The resistance to TSA groping and naked body scanners is only accelerating as Thanksgiving nears and a national opt-out protest is less than 48 hours away.

More and more cases of TSA abuse continue to pour in on a daily basis as Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole indicates for the first time that the agency may be starting to cave to the backlash. Pistole told CNN’s State of the Union yesterday that screening procedures would not be altered but in a subsequent statement acknowledged that the TSA needed to make airport security “as minimally invasive as possible,” in response to the building nationwide outrage and vows by numerous airport directors to ditch the TSA altogether in favor of private security.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.


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TSA Tactics Find Ominous Parallel in Nazi Germany

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 22, 2010

The TSA is part of a larger effort to implement a slow motion surveillance and high-tech police state control grid in America. It is an element of the “alternative geography” of the military-corporate-intelligence establishment, an aspect specifically designed to acclimate Americans to the prospect of an ever encroaching police state. The tight integration of the corporate-government aspect of this alternative geography is demonstrated by the relationship the government has with the Chertoff Group, a public relations firm pushing naked body scanners founded by Michael Chertoff, the former boss of the Department of Homeland Security.



The new procedures defended over the weekend by Barry Obama from a NATO summit in Portugal are not about finding the next underwear bomber and protecting the American people from al-Qaeda. The latest procedures are designed to get the American people accustomed to the idea that the police, the alternative geography of the military-corporate-intelligence network, and the government will micro-manage and control the public and eventually all aspects of our private lives. Events reveal that the government is not interested in preventing an al-Qaeda attack, but keeping tabs on and when possible subverting opposition to its power.

Child subjected to TSA strip search.


It took Hitler and the Nazis nearly a decade to impose a murderous police state on the German people. In the wake of the staged burning of the Reichstag in February of 1933, the Nazis suspended the civil liberties of the German people and began a concerted effort to eliminate all opposition to their fascist regime. The Nazis would later stage a false flag incident known as the Gleiwitz incident in order to provide and excuse to invade Poland and start the Second World War.*

Left unchallenged, government invariably evolves into a tyrannical force at odds with the interest of the people. Minus effective opposition, the people of Germany had little choice but to support Hitler and his ill-fated war.*

*

Women stripped and then made to wait for their turn.*

It has taken the federal government and its Department of Homeland Security – an agency on the drawing board well before September 11, 2001 – to implement police state tactics in regard to travel that far surpass anything devised by the Nazis.*

Even before the attacks of September 11, 2001, the government planned to create and impose a police state control grid on the American people. For instance, the Bill of Rights crushing Patriot Act was devised well before the attack and its predecessor, the 1996 Antiterrorism Act, was rushed into law following the first suspicious attack on the World Trade Center and the equally suspicious attack in Oklahoma City. Habeas corpus law was forever changed by the law touted by then president Bill Clinton.*

Armed with its new and draconian palette of laws and mandates, the federal government, including the FBI, the CIA, and the Pentagon, have exploited the September 11 attacks to go after the real enemy – the American people.

Coming soon to an airport near you — strip searches.

The Pentagon has surveilled the antiwar movement and the Department of Homeland Security with its state level partners in Missouri and elsewhere around the country have profiled entirely legal “rightwing” political organizations and individuals as potential terrorists. The corporate media, acting as the establishment’s ministry of propaganda, has amplified this absurd terrorist myth.*

As the founders realized, government left to its own devices and unrestrained by the people invariably turns into a tyrannical leviathan. Groping TSA screeners and dangerous radiation naked body scanners are the public visage of the state as it slowly morphs into a high-tech tyranny.



Just as in Nazi Germany, the authorities-that-be are forcing women, children and men to strip search. Now it is happening in the United States of America, a supposedly free country.

President Barry Obama, DHS boss Janet Napolitano, and TSA director John Pistole have said naked body scanners will remain and the sexual molestation at America’s airports will continue.*

“I understand how difficult it is, and how offensive it must be for the people who are going through it,” said Secretary of State Clinton today. Clinton said the government is “trying to do the right thing” by expanding the intrusive nature of the police state.*

“Clinton has likely rarely, if ever, dealt with metal detectors, explosives swabs, full-body backscatter scanners or pat-downs as an air traveler since she began receiving Secret Service protection with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in 1992,” reports the Christian Science Monitor.**

But then the police state and its ever growing manifestations of surveillance and control are not for the likes of Hillary Clinton and other leaders, officials, and minions of government power.*

The growing police state grid is for the American people because since time immemorial government has been an enemy of the people.


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Economist: TSA screenings will kill Americans on highways

Raw Story
Nov 22, 2010

The TSA’s intrusive new screenings will result in more deaths on highways, says an economist with St. Lawrence University in New York state.

Steven Horwitz says the TSA’s options of a full body scan or an intimate pat-down will prompt more people to drive this holiday season. That will mean heavier traffic and — because driving is more dangerous than flying — higher casualties.

The Hill reports:

Activists opposed to the TSA’s measures are calling for a “national opt-out day” on Nov. 24, to protest the new screening measures, a move that itself could increase airport delays and prompt even more people to opt out of flying altogether. The Associated Press reports:

“Just one or two recalcitrant passengers at an airport is all it takes to cause huge delays,” said Paul Ruden, a spokesman for the American Society of Travel Agents, which has warned its more than 8,000 members about delays resulting from the body-scanner boycott.

It doesn’t take much to mess things up anyway — especially if someone purposely tries to mess it up.”

Body scans take as little as 10 seconds, but people who decline the process must submit to a full pat-down, which takes much longer. That could cause a cascade of delays at dozens of major airports, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta.

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Grandmother Searched by TSA In Front of 7 Year Old Granddaughter

Fox News
Nov 22, 2010

“I feel molested. I’d like to go take a shower with Lysol (afterwards),” Miernik said, describing the pat downs, which she said includes being “touched all over.”

Full article here






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Children Trained That Being Taken From Parents & Molested Is Normal

TSA Abducted Child From Mother For Secret Pat Down

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Monday, November 22, 2010

If anyone else abducted someone’s child and then sexually molested them they would be rightly called a pedophile and locked up for a long time, but when the government does it not only is it deemed acceptable, but it also trains a whole generation of children that being kidnapped by an adult and having their genitals groped is normal.

The TSA’s refusal to spare young children from invasive and degrading pat downs that have outraged Americans is fundamentally impacting parents’ efforts to protect their kids from sexual predators.

The shocking video last week of a 3-year-old girl screaming “don’t touch me” as a TSA agent aggressively pats her down was matched by equally disturbing footage which emerged yesterday of a young boy being frisked by TSA workers while half-naked.

These images not only remind us of the fact that, as the Drudge Report highlighted last week, the terrorists have won, but they also threaten to legitimize the sexual molestation of children, so long as it’s performed by someone in uniform.

Indeed, the TSA not only targets children for pat down procedures that amount to little less than perverted fondling, they also do so after removing the child completely from its parents in some cases.

In a chilling story that took place last year but was re-posted on the CNN iReport website today, a mother described how a male TSA agent abducted her son in order to carry out a secret pat down on him while she was forced to stay behind as she became hysterical and began to hyperventilate.

The incident took place at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport after a woman was told to wait in a holding area for setting off a metal detector because she was holding her young son who had a pacifier clip hanging from his t-shirt.

Although there were four TSA agents standing around doing nothing, the woman was forced to wait and quickly became worried that she would miss her flight, which was scheduled to leave in 45 minutes. She was unable to even collect her own belongings as TSA workers ignored her pleas, one stating, “Ma’am you need to wait. I don’t care about your departure time.”

When the woman and her small child were finally allowed to leave the plastic box they had been confined to, TSA agents still refused to allow the woman to even sit near her belongings.

Despite the fact that the TSA’s website states, “We will not ask you to do anything that will separate you from your child or children,” the man then took the boy and walked off with him, leaving the mother in tears as the child screamed for her.

When the woman loudly protested at the fact that her son had been abducted, she was told by one of the female TSA workers, “Ma’am you need to calm down or I’m going to have to involve the authorities.” The TSA screener then forced her to unbutton her jeans during a personal search.

The mother became hysterical, nearly blacking out as she suffered an anxiety attack, before the TSA worker finally brought back her son as he started yelling, “Mommy!”

Yelling obscenities at every single TSA agent in sight as she sobbed uncontrollably, the woman made it onto her plane with just minutes to spare and had no time to file a formal complaint.

Given the fact that TSA agents are already abusing even their own guidelines by physically putting their hands down people’s pants and directly touching their genitals, expect more parents to experience similar horrors as those described here in the run up to Thanksgiving.

TSA workers have continually proven that they are an unprofessional, poorly trained, abusive and savage federal goon squad who are completely incapable of providing proper security, excelling instead at harassing innocent travelers and treating Americans worse than farmyard animals.

Not only do the policies that have earned the TSA the reputation of perhaps the most loathed federal entity in America need to be thrown out, but the agency itself needs to be abolished altogether, otherwise we’re going to see a whole generation of children being trained that it’s OK for the nice man in the uniform to touch their private parts.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.


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TSA’s Top Transgressions: Who Is Doing The Terrorizing?

The purpose of heightened security is purely to humiliate, coerce*and control



Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Monday, Nov 22nd, 2010

The total destruction of inalienable rights and freedoms currently being enacted by TSA government overlords in the name of fighting terrorism has now reached fever pitch. Here we detail the top ten TSA transgressions and ask, who are the real terrorists?

“Hands up, this is a stick up”

Every traveler who is forced to walk through a naked body scanner is made to raise their hands above their heads. This puts out the subconscious notion that everyone passing through the machines is guilty by default and has been caught by the authorities engaging in a law breaking act.

Many of the images used by the TSA and the media as publicity shots for the scanners depict concealed weapons.

The real purpose of the scanners is to encourage submission and break the will of the people.

“We have an opt out”

The procedure for dealing with any sheep that strays from the flock in refusing to walk through the radiation spewing naked body scanner is to pull them out of line, whilst yelling “we have an opt out”.

The person is then subjected to molestation in full view of all other queuing travelers. This serves as a warning to those looking on that compliance is their best option.

“I love those gigantic t**s”

There have been scores of cases of TSA workers abusing their positions by making lewd comments and humiliating travelers by sniggering and laughing at their naked bodies.

One of the most disturbing, which is subject to an ongoing lawsuit, involved a 21-year-old college student from Amarillo Texas. The woman was passing through security at Corpus Christi airport on May 29 2008 when she was subjected to “extended search procedures” by the TSA.

“As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff’s blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs’ breasts to everyone in the area,” the lawsuit said. “As would be expected, plaintiff was extremely embarrassed and humiliated.”

TSA workers continued to laugh and joke about the incident “for an extended period of time,” leaving the woman distraught and needing to be consoled. After the woman re-entered the boarding area, TSA workers continued to humiliate her over the incident.

“One male TSA employee expressed to the plaintiff that he wished he would have been there when she came through the first time and that ‘he would just have to watch the video,’” the suit said.

The woman filed an administrative claim against the TSA but was forced to launch a full lawsuit after the agency failed to respond.

The incident bears similarities to a 2002 case involving a pregnant woman who had her breasts exposed by TSA agents in public. Her husband was thrown in the airport jail for complaining about the treatment of his wife.

Other cases involve TSA agents making comments about the size of private parts, subjecting those involved to trauma and humiliation.

“Please remove your breasts”

A Charlotte-area flight attendant and cancer survivor contacted WBTV after she says she was forced to show her prosthetic breast during a pat-down.

She says two female Charlotte TSA agents took her to a private room and began what she calls an aggressive pat down. She says they stopped when they got around to feeling her right breast… the one where she’d had surgery.

“She put her full hand on my breast and said, ‘What is this?’. And I said, ‘It’s my prosthesis because I’ve had breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘Well, you’ll need to show me that’.”

Stripping teenage girls with prosthetic legs, people with artificial knees and making women pull out their nipple rings with pliers is also entirely “professional” according to the TSA. Leaving a bladder cancer survivor covered in his own urine is just another day for the TSA.

“I am God”

The ritual abuse and humiliation of innocent passengers at the hands of TSA thugs has been going on for at least nine years. We hear stories just about every week from people who go through traumatic and degrading experiences at the hands of low grade morons in TSA uniforms.

The TSA’s website claims that the agency displays the characteristics of a “professional workforce”. If you consider screaming

as one TSA agent at LAX did earlier this year, then you also probably think that discriminating against the elderly and disabled by subjecting them to intense harassment and debasement, while physically attacking women, is also perfectly reasonable.

“Let me see inside your pants”

New TSA “pat down” measures introduced at the end of last month for people who refuse the dangerous naked body scan involve TSA agents using the front of their hands and literally cupping and squeezing women’s breasts and men’s testicles. As USA Today reported, “The searches require screeners to touch passengers’ breasts and genitals.”

Radio host Owen JJ Stone, who had a TSA agent put his hand inside his pants and touch his backside and genitalia, has not indicated he will pursue charges, but has vowed instead to use his treatment as an example of why the TSA needs to be stopped in its tracks or abolished altogether.

Another lawsuit against the TSA involves Ron Corbett, a businessman and frequent traveler who is so infuriated by the plethora of cases where TSA workers have sexually groped passengers, squeezing breasts and genitals, that he has filed a lawsuit in federal court in Miami requesting an injunction against the TSA to prevent them from touching private areas without reasonable suspicion.

Corbett writes about his lawsuit on a blog entitled TSA Out Of Our Pants.

“Having grown up in New York and personally seeing the smoke rise from the towers that morning in 2001, I know the threat of terrorism is real, and I know we must defend ourselves. This does not mean that the Constitution should be ignored, and indeed, the TSA has plenty of alternative screening procedures that are less invasive. Besides the privacy issue, there have been health issues raised as to the radiation produced by the imaging devices, as well as efficacy issues, with no good studies having been done to show that this imagery makes us any safer,” writes Corbett.

Other cases involve an ABC producer who described a TSA agent groping inside of her underwear as “worse than the gynecologist,” a woman being lifted off her heels via her vagina, and several cases of women having their skirts lifted up and their private areas groped in public.

“I need to touch your child’s genitals”

As we have continually highlighted, children are not exempt from the kind of experiences described above.

Video of TSA agents searching a shirtless 5-year-old boy has become an internet sensation. A Utah man reportedly removed his son’s shirt during the screening process after the boy was too shy to let TSA agents search him.

Other descriptions detail the ongoing strip searching of children in airports.

As reported by Reuters, parents are now demanding that the procedures be changed for children, after witnesses have described their children’s genitals being touched by men and women working for the TSA.

“I didn’t think it was going to be as horrible as he was describing,” one father noted after an agent told him what he was going to do to the child before conducting the full body search.

“At some point the terrorists have won.” the father added.

While the TSA suggested that children under 12 are to be made exempt from such procedures, reports from parents suggest this is not the case.

This despite the fact that the TSA has a woeful history when it comes to conducting adequate background checks for their own employees, which has allowed sex criminals to get jobs as pat down agents.

Who are the terrorists?

Section 802 of the U.S. Patriot Act, titled “Definition of Domestic Terrorism,” provides several definitions of domestic terrorism, including this one:

“The term `domestic terrorism’ means . . . activities that appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.”

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, recently got a TSA agent to admit that the prospect of genital groping is being used as a means of coercion. In an Oct. 29 posting, Goldberg wrote:

So given this by no means extensive list of TSA transgressions, ask yourself who is actually terrorizing the American people?

——————————————————————

Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor at Alex Jones’ Infowars.net, and regular contributor to Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham in England.


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Passenger Chooses Strip-Down Over Pat-Down

R. STICKNEY
NBC San Diego
Nov 22, 2010

When a San Diego man opted out of security screening using the Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) at Lindbergh Field Friday, he stripped down to his underwear in an attempt to avoid the pat-down procedures.

Samuel Wolanyk took the protest started Nov. 13 by Oceanside’s John Tyner to a whole new level.

While Tyner videotaped his refusal to be patted down, telling the agent “If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested,” Wolanyk decided to give TSA a look at his body down to his Calvin*Klein’s.

Through a statement released by his attorney Sunday night, Wolanyk said “TSA needs to see that I’m not carrying any weapons, explosives, or other prohibited substances, I refuse to have images of my naked body viewed by perfect strangers, and having been felt up for the first time by TSA the week prior (I travel frequently) I was not willing to be molested again.”

Full article here

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ABC producer says TSA agent felt inside her underwear

David Edwards
Raw Story
Nov 22, 2010

Pat-down ‘worse than the gynecologist,’ producer says

As the busiest travel days of the year approach, more and more passengers are accusing the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of going too far with their screenings.

Earlier this month, the TSA began new security procedures in many airports including scans that produce images of the naked body and pat-downs.

One employee of ABC News who opted for the pat-down instead of the full body scan claimed that a TSA agent actually felt inside of her underwear.

“The woman who checked me reached her hands inside my underwear and felt her way around,” said ABC News producer Carolyn Durand. “It was basically worse than going to the gynecologist.”

Full article here

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TSA Searches: Are Trains and Subways Next?

Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
Monday, November 22, 2010

John Pistole, the TSA boss, has implored activists to rethink their “opt-out” protest this week. Pistole warns that the national protest against naked body scanners and intrusive pat downs at airports would be a mistake and will only serve to “tie up people who want to go home and see their loved ones,” according to the Associated Press.

If John Pistole and the federal government have their way, we may have to opt-out of taking the subway or riding a train in the near future. “I understand people’s frustrations,” said president Obama from Lisbon over the weekend. Obama said at present naked body scanners and pat down searches bordering on sexual molestation are the best way to prevent Muslims in caves from attacking the American people. Secretary of State Clinton told Meet the Press on Sunday that “everyone, including our security experts, are looking for ways to diminish the impact on the traveling public” and that “striking the right balance is what this is about.”

For now, that “balance” means a near minimum wage TSA worker will fondle your testicles and there is nothing you can do about it. Protesting will only slow down traffic and prevent people from visiting their family and friends.

Obama and Clinton expect you to bite the bullet and accept what amounts to sexual molestation in order to board a commercial airplane in the United States. Pistole said it really is not a big deal because “a very small percent” of people are subject to the process of submission and humiliation.

If past comments made by Mr. Pistole are any indicator, however, the government would like to see naked body scanners and intrusive pat downs expand from airports to train stations and subway platforms.

Soon after taking over the TSA earlier this year, the former FBI deputy director Pistole told USA Today that he will work to expand airport Gestapo zones. “Protecting riders on mass-transit systems from terrorist attacks will be as high a priority as ensuring safe air travel, the new head of the Transportation Security Administration promises,” the newspaper reported on July 17.

“Given the list of threats on subways and rails over the last six years going on seven years, we know that some terrorist groups see rail and subways as being more vulnerable because there’s not the type of screening that you find in aviation,” Pistole said. “From my perspective, that is an equally important threat area.”

In addition, Pistole said he would like to see TSA workers, including 47,000 screeners at 450 airports, to operate as a “national-security, counterterrorism organization, fully integrated into U.S. government efforts.” He wants to “take TSA to the next level.”

Earlier this month, the TSA implemented the “enhanced” security procedures that are now coming under fire and have resulted in countless people refusing to fly and the roll out of the national opt-out campaign that will commence on November 24 across the country.

If John Pistole and the federal government have their way, we may have to opt-out of taking the subway or riding a train in the near future.

It may not be long before you are forced through a naked body scanner or obliged to have your genitals groped in order to visit the local market to buy food and necessities. Considering the trajectory the TSA and the government are on, you may have to submit to a body cavity search at the local mall.

The Pentagon and local law enforcement are ahead of the curve. “As the privacy controversy around full-body security scans begins to simmer, it’s worth noting that courthouses and airport security checkpoints aren’t the only places where backscatter x-ray vision is being deployed. The same technology, capable of seeing through clothes and walls, has also been rolling out on U.S. Streets,” Andy Greenberg wrote for Forbes in August. “While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s [roving x-ay] machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.”

There are few if any “vehicle-based bombs” on U.S. roads, not that this fact has prevented the government from claiming it is a threat. The DHS released a memo “stating that terrorists may try to kill innocent women, children and men in the United States by hiding IEDs in luggage left at airports,” Fox News reported not long after patsy and barbeque grill gas canister non-bomber Faisal Shahzad was arrested.

If you think this is simply more fear-mongering, consider that the TSA has already beta tested searching Greyhound bus terminals in Florida. In 2005, the agency used the Madrid bombings as an excuse to train officers to use bomb sniffing dogs in mass transit stations. “The agency’s broader role overseeing all forms of public transportation and the increased terrorist threat to mass transit indicated by train bombings in Madrid and London have caused the canine program to expand significantly in recent years, the TSA’s Web site reports,” according to the U.S. Air Force.

Kurt Nimmo edits Infowars.com. He is the author of Another Day in the Empire: Life In Neoconservative America.

Related

Beck: Obama Will Blame Terror Attack On TSA Resistance

TSA needs false flag security incident to convince Americans to accept obscene pat-downs

TSA Tactics Find Ominous Parallel in Nazi Germany

Young Boy Strip Searched by TSA

TSA Warns Travelers May Be Arrested, Detained, and Fined for Refusing Search

Breaking: Former Gov. Ventura Will No Longer Fly Due to Abuse He’s Endured at Hands of TSA

Don’t Touch My Junk (the TSA Hustle) Song

DA Now Sending Deputies to SF Airport to Investigate Felony Groping

TSA Abuse Opens the Door to Resistance


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TSA Chief: US Will Never Ease Screening Policy

11-23-2010 03:41 AM


'TSA Chief John Pistole reiterated today that the administration has absolutely no intention of ever changing its screening policy, insisting that the TSA is “the last line of defense for the US government” and that all the incidents of groping he was asked about were “appropriate” in the face of terrorists.

Though some said President Obama’s feigned sympathy suggested a change might be in the offing, Pistole seemed determined to indicate that the system is only going to get more intrusive over time.'

Read more: TSA Chief: US Will Never Ease Screening Policy

Man Proves TSA Policies Are Unconstitutional

Traveler bypasses body scanner and invasive pat down after near 3 hour debate with TSA supervisor, airport police



Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Blogger Matt Kernan was able to bypass both the naked body scanner and invasive TSA pat down procedures during his return to the United States this past weekend, proving that both measures are completely unconstitutional and creating a precedent for a total shake-up of airport security.

Kernan, who documents the case on his website, was returning from a trip to Europe and was perturbed to see TSA workers making Americans who had already cleared security in their airport of origin go through backscatter x-ray machines and be groped simply to re-enter their own country.

“You see, it is official TSA policy that people (both citizens and non-citizens alike) from international flights are screened as they enter the airport, despite the fact that they have already flown,” writes Kernan. “Even before the new controversial security measures were put in place, I found this practice annoying. But now, as I looked past the 25 people waiting to get into their own country, I saw it: the dreaded Backscatter imaging machine.”

Having seen the plethora of cases in recent weeks of TSA thugs abusing and humiliating women and children, Kernan, who had no connecting flight and time to kill, decided to take a stand.

So begins Kernan’s description of his 2 and a half hour debate with TSA officials and airport police after he refused to go through the naked scanner or be groped.

After TSA workers laughed at Kernan for opting out of the radiation scanner, he politely informed them that if they touched his genitals he would consider it an assault.

With TSA officials repeating “policy” like a broken record, Kernan stated, “I am aware that it is policy, but I disagree with the policy, and I think that it is unconstitutional. As a U.S. citizen, I have the right to move freely within my country as long as I can demonstrate proof of citizenship and have demonstrated no reasonable cause to be detained.”

Soon after the TSA Supervisor, a Delta Airlines manager and the airport police were called and Kernan informed them that he was recording the audio of the exchange on his iPhone.

“I will not do anything that is not explicitly stated on recording as mandatory,” Kernan told them, as the police suggested they conduct the pat down instead of the TSA. However, the cops were forced to back down when they refused to state on record that Kernan would have to have his genitals touched in order to be free to go.

After a disagreement between the police and the TSA about who had jurisdiction to arrest Kernan, the police began to get frustrated with the TSA Supervisor for pawning off the responsibility on them. At this point, the Supervisor tried to involve the “Federal Security Director,” who was told that Kernan was being polite and citing his constitutional rights.

After more deliberation, Kernan was eventually escorted out of the airport without having to go through a naked body scanner or have his genitals groped.

“And then came the most ridiculous scene of which I’ve ever been a part. I gather my things – jacket, scarf, hat, briefcase, chocolates. We walk over to the staff entrance and he scans his badge to let me through. We walk down the long hallway that led back to the baggage claim area. We skip the escalators and moving walkways. As we walk, there are TSA officials stationed at apparent checkpoints along the route. As we pass them, they form part of the circle that is around me. By the end of the walk, I count 13 TSA officials and 2 uniformed police officers forming a circle around me. We reach the baggage claim area, and everyone stops at the orange line. The Supervisor grunts, “Have a nice day,” and leaves.”

By simply remaining calm and polite while citing his constitutional rights, Kernan proved that, despite the best efforts of the TSA to intimidate people into submission by threatening $11,000 fines, it is not illegal to refuse to be put through a radiation scanner or be groped by TSA workers.

Kernan proved that the whole procedure is unconstitutional and a violation of rights, and after acknowledging this fact, TSA officials and the airport police had no other choice but to let him go free.

Tomorrow’s national op-out day provides the opportunity for thousands more Americans to follow in Kernan’s footsteps and permanently put to rest the notion that violating TSA “policy” is a criminal act, when in fact the policy in itself is a violation of constitutional rights and therefore completely illegal.

*********************

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.


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Airport Security Measures Spark Unusual Passenger Reaction

schnittshow.com
Nov 23, 2010

ST. THOMAS, US Virgin Islands* – Recent security measures taken by the TSA have caused a major stir among travelers who claim that the full-body scanners and pat-down procedures are excessive and invasive.* Some travelers are fighting back, refusing to submit to the screenings and in the case of one man departing from the St. Thomas airport, took extreme measures.



Full article here

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TSA Gestapo Empire

Paul Craig Roberts
Prisonplanet.com
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.


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Are Air Travelers Criminal Suspects?

Ron Paul
Campaign For Liberty
Nov 23, 2010

The growing revolt against invasive TSA practices is encouraging to Americans who are fed up with federal government encroachment in their lives. In the case of air travelers, this encroachment is quite literally physical. But a deep-seated libertarian impulse still exists within the American people, and opposition to the new TSA full body scanner and groping searches is gathering momentum.

The growing revolt against invasive TSA practices is encouraging to Americans who are fed up with federal government encroachment in their lives. In the case of air travelers, this encroachment is quite literally physical. But a deep-seated libertarian impulse still exists within the American people, and opposition to the new TSA full body scanner and groping searches is gathering momentum.

I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.

This principle goes beyond TSA agents, however. As commentator Lew Rockwell recently noted, the bill “enshrines the key lesson of the freedom philosophy: the government is not above the moral law. If it is wrong for you and me, it is wrong for people in government suits. . . That is true of TSA crimes too.” The revolt against TSA also serves as a refreshing reminder that we should not give in to government alarmism or be afraid to question government policies.

Certainly, those who choose to refuse the humiliating and potentially harmful new full body scanner machines may suffer delays, inconveniences, or worse. But I still believe peaceful resistance is the most effective tool against federal encroachment on our constitutional rights, which leads me to be supportive of any kind of “opt-out” or similar popular movements.

After all, what price can we place on our dignity, personal privacy, and physical integrity? We have a right not to be treated like criminals and searched by federal agents without some reasonable evidence of criminal activity. Are we now to accept that merely wishing to travel and board an aircraft give rise to reasonable suspicion of criminality?

Also, let’s not forget that TSA was created in the aftermath of 9/11, when far too many Americans were clamoring for government protection from the specter of terrorism. Indeed it was congressional Republicans, the majority party in 2001, who must bear much of the blame for creating the Department of Homeland Security and TSA in the first place. Congressional Republicans also overwhelmingly supported the Patriot Act, which added to the atmosphere of hostility toward civil liberties in the name of state-provided “security.”

But as we’ve seen with TSA, federal “security” has more to do with humiliation and control than making us safe. It has more to do with instilling a mindset of subservience, which is why laughable policies such as removing one’s shoes continue to be enforced. What else could explain the shabby, degrading spectacle of a long line of normally upbeat Americans shuffling obediently through airport security in their stocking feet?

TSA may be merely symbolic of much bigger problems with the federal government, but it is an important symbol and we have a real chance to do something about it. We must seize this opportunity, before TSA offers some cosmetic compromise or the media spotlight fades. If you don’t live in my congressional district, please consider contacting your member of Congress and asking him or her to cosponsor HR 6416, the American Traveler Dignity Act of 2010. With enough help, we can push the bill to a vote early next year. Unless grassroots Americans take action, federal agencies like TSA will continue to bully us and ignore our basic constitutional freedoms.


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22 Incredibly Revealing Quotes About Enhanced Pat Downs And TSA Groping

The American Dream
Nov 23, 2010

At what point will Americans finally stop losing more liberty and freedom?* With each passing year, the iron grip of the government gets even tighter, and each time it does we are told that it is either for “our safety” or for “national security”.* One can only imagine what is going to happen the next time there is any kind of “terror incident” on an airplane.* They are going to point to all those Americans who are complaining about “enhanced pat downs” and TSA groping as the reason why security is not tough enough.* So where does all this end?* Will we eventually all have to go through a body cavity search just to get on an airplane?* Will they start groping us at school, at work and at sporting events?* Are we going to have to “lock down” America from coast to coast to ensure that no terrorist ever is able to harm any American?

The way that we are going, we soon won’t have to worry about “terrorists” taking away our freedoms because they will already be gone.* Is any amount of “safety” worth living like this?* If America turns into one big prison camp where we are all prodded, poked, groped, watched, tracked and treated like sub-human slaves will it even be worth living in anymore?

The following are 22 quotes about enhanced pat downs and TSA groping.* They are presented without commentary because they speak for themselves.* Please share these quotes as widely as possible.* If Americans do not wake up now, when will they ever wake up?….

#1 Blogger Erin Chase:

I stood there, an American citizen, a mom traveling with a baby with special needs formula, sexually assaulted by a government official. I began shaking and felt completely violated, abused and assaulted by the TSA agent. I shook for several hours, and woke up the next day shaking.

#2 ABC News producer Carolyn Durand:

“The woman who checked me reached her hands inside my underwear and felt her way around.”

#3 Wendy James Gigliotti:

“She said ’spread your legs.’ And then she took her full palms and started at my neck and ran all the way down my body, full palms, constant contact. And when she got down to my feet, she was in constant contact from my ankles all the way up to my groin, across my groin, and down the other leg. And she did that twice.”

#4 Female air traveler Ella Swift:

“The female officer ran her hand up the inside of my leg to my groin and she did it so hard and so rough she lifted me off my heels.”

#5 Flight attendant Cathy Bossi:

“She put her full hand on my breast and said, ‘What is this?’.* And I said, ‘It’s my prosthesis because I’ve had breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘Well, you’ll need to show me that’.”

#6 Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano:

“I think we all understand the concerns Americans have. It’s something new. Most Americans are not used to a real law enforcement pat-down like that.”

#7 A 61-year-old bladder cancer survivor:

“One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”

#8 An anonymous TSA worker:

“Molester, pervert, disgusting, an embarrassment, creep. These are all words I have heard today at work describing me. …These comments are painful and demoralizing.”

#9 Robert Colella:

If some total stranger walked up to you in the street and said “I am either going to see you naked or touch your genitals”, What would be the likelihood of that person walking away from that encounter?

#10 CNN employee Rosemary Fitzpatrick:

“As an experienced traveler for work who was in tears for most of the search process, I have never experienced a more traumatic and invasive travel event!”

#11 Meagan Quinn:

I will not board an airplane in America until the TSA body scanners are gone. No one is seeing my naked body unless I let them. I will also not settle for being GROPED in public as an alternative.

#12 A lawsuit filed on behalf of a female college student from Amarillo Texas:

“As the TSA agent was frisking plaintiff, the agent pulled the plaintiff’s blouse completely down, exposing plaintiffs’ breasts to everyone in the area.”

#13 Bruce Sargent:

The sexual humiliation of detainees at Abu Ghraib is not so very different then the sexual humiliation being heaped on American air travelers at airports. Why is TSA torturing us to protect us?

#14 A 37-year-old Texas woman who had her nipple ring removed with a pair of pliers before she was allowed to pass through security:

“My experience with TSA was a nightmare I had to endure. No one deserves to be treated this way.”

#15 A soldier returning from Afghanistan:

“So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the soldier that they’re going to confiscate his nail clippers.”

#16 A flight attendant named Megan:

The agent went up my right leg first and then met my vagina with full force….the same on the other leg with the same result. She then used both of her hands to feel my breasts and squeezing them. At this point I was in shock.

#17 Jay Glover:

I spend on average $30K per year on business travel. The airlines get the bulk of this but hotels, car rentals, meals and miscellaneous expenses add up as well. Where I can cut travel, I will. When those associated with airport travel feel the financial pinch just watch how fast this all will change.

#18 Paul Craig Roberts:

It is difficult to imagine New Yorkers being porno-screened and sexually groped on crowded 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.

#19 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when asked if she would like to go through the new pat-downs:

“Not if I could avoid it. No. I mean, who would?”

#20 TSA Administrator John Pistole during a Congressional hearing:

“If you are asking me, am I going to change my policies? No.”

#21 U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller to TSA chief John Pistole:

“I Think You’re Doing A Terrific Job.”

#22 Congressman Ron Paul:

I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.

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TSA won’t do body cavity searches — at least for now

David Edwards
Raw Story
Nov 23, 2010

Airline passengers have been subjected to full body scans and pat-downs as part of new screening procedures this month but the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) admits there is a limit to how far they are willing to go.

Director John Pistole told reporters Monday that for the time being the TSA had no plans of doing body cavity searches.

“We’re not going to get in the business of body cavities, that’s not where we are,” Pistole said.

“Even if it is a body cavity [bomb], you still have to an initiator, you have to have some external device to cause that initiation,” he continued. “There’s got to be something external that you can then initiate the device and that’s what the advance imaging technology machine will pick up: Any anomaly outside of the body.”

“We are taking some risk by not doing any screening, but it’s the balance of what is the appropriate level of risk versus screening,” he said.

Full article here

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TSA responds to passenger outrages: Underwear search should ‘never’ happen

JAKE TAPPER, HUMA KHAN, SHARYN ALFONSI and LEE FERRAN
ABC News
Nov 23, 2010

The head of the Transportation Security Administration John Pistole today said that at least one airport passenger screening went too far when an officer reached inside a traveler’s underwear, and said the agency is open to rethinking current protocols.

That search was against protocols and “never” should have happened, TSA administrator Pistole told “Good Morning America” today.

“There should never be a situation where that happens,” Pistole said. “The security officers are there to protect the traveling public. There are specific standard operating protocols, which they are to follow.”



Full article here

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