Posted on 12/29/2003 9:18:12 AM PST by NorCoGOP
MESA, Ariz. -- There appears to be a trend emerging in modern Western society. It is something that has been noticeable in the past, but is something that I think has become more prominent and disturbing in recent years. It is the habit we have developed of sacrificing personal freedom and convenience in favor of increased security, almost always in reaction to an isolated incident which we are afraid to treat as such.
Periodically, and with alarming frequency, something tragic will happen that will be greatly publicized. Perhaps this event injures or kills a person or many people; and, whether it is the media-driven American people demanding a change or elected officials eager to look like they are making a difference, precautions are put in place which restrict those very American people to the point that such an event recurring is nearly impossible.
The most dramatic of these events, with the most far-reaching internal effects, has been the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. I recall when our leaders assured us that the best way to fight the terrorists ourselves was to continue to live our lives normally and enjoy the freedoms that our enemies would wish to take away from us.
But our fear became a far greater opponent to our freedoms than any band of calculating psychopaths could ever achieve. And so things began to change.
As if to protect us from the inevitable eventuality of further hijackings, soldiers with machine guns took the place of obnoxious airport metal detector attendants. All luggage needed to be unpacked, studied, and repacked before transport on a passenger jet. My small Swiss army knife was instantly transformed from a personal convenience to a deadly weapon for terrorist use. Racial profiling became a very real law enforcement technique. And I can't get on a plane without taking my shoes off at the terminal.
Is this our normal life? Am I safer in my flight because my family and friends can't come and meet me at the gate? How has America gotten through 70 years of commercial flight without needing machine guns at every terminal? Are someone's socks really a threat to the lives of everybody on that plane?
As if this wasn't enough, our leaders drafted and almost unanimously passed the USA Patriot Act, 342 pages of knee-jerk legislation which has been adequately covered by this publication. For our own good, they removed any privacy that we think we have in favor of allowing the government to take any measures it deems necessary to discern any malicious intent any of us may harbor. I believe that all who study this act will be stunned at the constitutional rights the act takes away.
I don't want to be that safe. And an event occurring doesn't necessarily make it any more likely to occur in the future. Someone blowing up a plane doesn't mean that "people blow up planes now." I don't expect it. I am not afraid of it. And no amount of gun-toting servicemen or phone-tapping FBI agents will make me less afraid.
No amount of security is worth my freedoms, nor is it worth my ability to lead a comfortable, normal life. We have no alternative but to build our world to accommodate normal people. We can and should take reasonable precautions to protect ourselves from the dangerously insane. I think metal detectors are a great idea. But at some point we have done all that we can reasonably be expected to do and can only hope for the best.
For over 200 years, people have been giving their lives to obtain and protect necessary freedoms for the people of this country; because freedom is possibly the only commodity more precious than life itself.
How does making a nursing mother drink her own breast milk at an airport "security" screening increase our awareness of preventing planes from flying into buildings?
Patriot Act helps the Feds in cases with no tie to terror
By Michael Isikoff
NewsweekDec. 1 issue - For FBI agents in Las Vegas, cases don’t get any juicier. Earlier this year the Feds were closing in on Michael Galardi, the city’s biggest strip-club baron, who was suspected of bribing local officials. Facing prosecution, Galardi cut a deal and confessed to funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to Clark County commissioners. Galardi told agents that he gave one official $20,000 to help buy a new SUV; another received $400 worth of lap dances at one of his clubs.
In exchange, the commissioners had allegedly done Galardi favors, such as spiking a proposed lap-dance ordinance that would have put stricter limits on how much the customers could touch. To make their case, the agents working “Operation G-String” needed to see the financial records of local officials. To do that, the FBI turned to a new weapon in its arsenal: the USA Patriot Act.
Whisked through Congress in the weeks after 9/11, the Patriot Act—which gives federal law enforcement wide-ranging powers to track and eavesdrop on suspected terrorists—was promoted as an urgently needed law to thwart future attacks. When civil libertarians complained the law could lead to abuses, Attorney General John Ashcroft derided them as “hysterics.” He insisted that any weakening of the act would “risk American lives.” Some early fears that the Patriot Act would be abused have been overblown. One much-criticized provision that allows the FBI to monitor the books people check out of libraries hasn’t actually been used at all. Yet Operation G-String shows how the Feds are using their new powers in cases that have nothing to do with terrorism—something most members of Congress never anticipated.
In Las Vegas, the Feds used a little-known provision in the Patriot Act that allows them to quickly obtain financial records of suspected terrorists or money launderers. Law-enforcement agencies can submit the name of any suspect to the Treasury Department, which then orders financial institutions across the country to search their records for any matches. If they get a “hit”—evidence that the person has an account—the financial institution is slapped with a subpoena for the person’s records.
Why go from victim to criminal all in one fell-swoop?
But being forced to drink your own breast milk is not a humiliation? You don't fly do you?
I would like to be the one to start it. I would have visibly armed attendants, and uniformed guards by the cockpit! The list of things that are mentioned, as being allowed, are your little bit of idiocy, but I would not have people taking off their shoes, nor standing in long lines, for nothing! The technology already exists to detect a bomb. Machines can detect gunpowder, but checked guns would never be forbidden....
I would sell out every flight, especially if the folk didn't have to show up forteen hours before a flight (a slight exageration, though, it justs seems so, while you are waiting in those lllllllllllooooooonnnnnggggggg lines!!!!)!
I'm sure you would. I'm also sure that al-Quida terrorists would be some of your first passengers!
Other than them, I don't think you would have many families flying with their babies and grandparents on your Wild West airline.
If screening bothers you so very much, why not go Greyhound?? Why beat your head against the wall time after time after time?
Makes no sense to me...
Flight attendants must, in the ordinary course of operations, get way too close to potentially-malevolent people for them to be armed safely unless they have some sort of "holster lock" to prevent them from being disarmed. Otherwise two or three people, properly situated, could easily take out a flight attendent.
Yup. Making multiple transactions under $10K, whose aggregate total is over $10K, is a felony if the government thinks you were trying to avoid the reporting requirement, even if the larger transaction would have been legal.
Pretty neat, huh?
Someplace in the family archives, I have a picture of my grandfather coming down the stairs of an Ozark Airways airplane with his .38 strapped to his hip.
Circa 1966.
I'd fly on an airline that let me carry, I'd take my family on such an airline and I'm pretty sure that grandpa would too, seeing as how it wouldn't be such a big deal to him.
Such an airline would be hugely popular, the lines would be mercifully short and it would be safer than all the rest. But there wouldn't be a role for nanny government, so it will never happen.
Sunday, December 28, 2003
Like many college students who flew home for the holidays, I had to endure the latest airport safeguards in the name of homeland security. A lot of us have stories to tell, but only mine is a fish tale, a contemporary melodrama of the absurd to prepare you for future travels.
My boyfriend Trey and I arrived by taxi at the US Airways terminal of La Guardia airport. We had four bags apiece, and one more precious piece of cargo -- MJ, my pet fish. MJ is a gorgeous fighting Betta fish, his palate a perfect pastel rainbow. He had become quite a solace to me in New York, a city that can make you feel so small and alone.
I missed my cats at college, and it really helped to have this tiny, exuberant creature to look after. Betta fish, research has shown, are the only aquatic animals that can recognize their owner. MJ was no exception. I'd walk into my cold dorm room after a long day and his body would just light up, and he would swim excited circles around his little bowl. Unfortunately, residence hall rules required that I take him home with me for winter break. That was just as well, since there would be no one there to care for him.
At La Guardia we proceeded to security and the X-ray inspection point run by the Transportation Security Administration. I have learned by now that, post-9/11, a traveler is better off safe than sorry when proceeding through security.
I wasn't prepared, however, for the TSA to stop me right at the entrance, proclaiming that no small pets, including fish, were permitted through security. I had, however, just received the blessing of the ticket agents at US Airways and pre-assured MJ's travels with Pittsburgh International Airport security weeks before our travel date. I tried to explain this to the screener who stood between me and the gates, but she would have none of it.
I was led back to the US Airways ticket counter, stocking-footed and alone, where the agents reasserted that they did not see a problem for me to have a fish on board, properly packaged in plastic fish bag and secured with a rubber band as MJ was. But the TSA supervisor was called over, and he berated me profusely. He exclaimed that in no way, under no circumstances, was a small fish allowed to pass through security, regardless of what the ticket agents said.
Mr. Supervisor was causing a grand scene, marshaling the full authority of the TSA to refuse me. Now, I know my fish is a terrorist (Osama Fin Laden we used to call him back at school), but doesn't it strike you as funny that, with all the commotion my little security threat was causing, by now engaging the full attention of the TSA at LaGuardia, that someone who posed a real threat to passenger safety might be conveniently slipping by?
By this time, I was in tears. The supervisor furiously told me to dispose of the fish. Dispose of my fish?! What did he want me to do, throw him away? He told me to go outside and give him to whomever I came to the airport with. When I explained I was a college student, alone in New York City (save for boyfriend Trey), he brushed me off and said that was not his problem.
I cried some more. With no other option that we could see, Trey and I headed toward a rest room.
Inside the ladies' room, I looked at MJ, swimming happily in his bag, and then the looming porcelain toilet bowl in front of me. I broke down. I couldn't do it.
I went back outside and told Trey I couldn't flush MJ. It was then, in this hopeless predicament, that Trey, ever brilliant and supportive, had an idea. He explained his plan to me.
Trey disappeared into the men's room with the fish and my backpack. When he got into the stall, he let out a bit of the water in MJ's bag, and packed the fish into my backpack, which only contained pants. Wedged between some corduroys and khakis, we prayed he wouldn't suffocate or get squished, not to mention fried by the security X-rays that can be fatal to small creatures such as fish. Every Web site I visited, every vet that I contacted said that air travel was no problem for Bettas, as long as I did not, under any circumstances, allow it to go through the X-ray machine.
In my research, I had learned that running a fish through an X-ray would be like a human getting radiation without wearing the protective lead cloak. At this point, though, we had no choice. We proceeded to a different security checkpoint, on the other side of the terminal.
Before we went through, Trey grabbed my hand. "Lara," he said, "you know there are only a few outcomes.
"One, they will see his bag or skeleton in the X-ray and catch us, we'll get in huge trouble for crossing security and we'll have to flush the fish. Two, he may die instantly in a blaze of glory from the X-rays. Or, he'll miraculously survive and we'll smuggle him onto the plane and pray that he survives the exposure." I shuddered and nodded.
We took a deep breath and proceeded. We loaded our things onto the belt before the X-ray machine and walked through. Once past the scanner, Trey and I grabbed our things and ran for the gates, eager to find the first bathroom to see if MJ was intact. On the way, we passed by the original security checkpoint we had tried to go through.
The agents were huddled together, and recognized us. "What did you do with the fish?" they asked, "What did you do with the fish!?"
Sensing a chance for comeuppance, Trey put on his "stone-cold-supportive-protector" face and said with great dramatics, "You know what ... we flushed him. We flushed him because you made us [pause for effect]. You killed my girlfriend's fish. No, you made her kill her fish ... Happy holidays."
I started sobbing again. Trey gave the TSA agents one last cold, steely gaze.
We turned and walked away. I smelled an Oscar.
Now in the rest room, I faced impending doom once again. I picked through my bag and found the familiar plastic. I pulled it out, and miraculously MJ was still alive!
Maybe it was God, maybe it was the corduroy, but someone wanted my fish to live. I then bought a doughnut from a coffee kiosk, placing MJ on the bottom of the paper bag I was given, and the pastry on top. Trey and I walked to the gate and checked in. A few passengers had witnessed our role in the La Guardia Christmas Security Spectacular and asked us what happened to the fish. We stuck to our story and told them it was gone.
The flight was full. I sat between two fat men who seemed intrigued by the brown paper bag I gently cradled in my lap the whole flight.
An hour and a half later, we were in Pittsburgh. We departed the people-mover, and ran one final time to the bathroom to see if MJ was OK, and he was.
Absolutely amazing. Two terminals, baggage claim and a car ride later, I was at home.
As I write this I sit with a cat in my lap and my fish, which I have aptly renamed X-ray, swimming contentedly in his glass-beaded bowl. And even though my actions may send Tom Ridge reeling and upset the karma of the Department of Homeland Security, I really don't care. Honestly, they have bigger fish to fry.
The way around is to only allow owners of the airline or airplane on board the plane. Kind of like a fractional ownership plan. If everyone who boards the plane is an owner, then TSA and Feds and what not can pound sand.
Each time you need to go somwhere, you just invest more money in 'your' airline. This way the aircraft is no longer a commercial carrier, but more like a big old corporate jet.
"The plant sent the fingerprints to the FBI, and they said it's outside the realm of the Homeland Security's guidelines (for what is needed). It was a little frustrating."
There was no U.S. Department of Homeland Security pre 9/11. They are the ones denying him the job.
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