The TSA Feels its Oats - Page 3

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Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah

So you don't believe insurance companies are interested in keeping planes in the air..? Ja. Do you have insurance? They come and determine your "pride of ownership". They send you letters about fire safety and you think they'll have nothing to say about people with guns or bombs flying on airplanes they insure... yeah rite. Insane, ja.

As soon as you enter a commercial airplane you submit to the rules that are set by the FEDS AND by the airline. You are no longer subject to the constitution since you are inside of a privately owned craft not a public area. Your civil rights protect you from searches by agents of the federal government like police, NOT FROM TSA OR AIRLINE EMPLOYEES, ja?

Read the contract when you buy a ticket!
You can be removed from the plane for all kinds of reasons at the discretion of airline employees.

The airline industry can hardly be considered "private" and consisting of "private property" in any real sense of those terms with the enormous amount of tax-funded subsidization and bailouts (remember the $15-20 BILLION in the post-9/11 bailout alone?) it has and continues to receive. The airports are paid for with tax money and controlled by the government. Their security (TSA) is paid for with tax money and controlled by the government. Their traffic control system is paid for with tax money and controlled by the government. Etc.

So we do live in a socialist country.

Ummm...yeah. Duh.

Well, partly. To be a bit more precise, I'd describe it as a blend of socialism and economic fascism/corporatism/corporate socialism/state capitalism with some actual free-market capitalism thrown in. With varying degrees of each. With the trend moving away from freedom toward more centralized state control.

I fail to see Wormhole's point. Anyway, I was wondering when this topic of the TSA would get a thread on AI for a while now. These scanners are not fool proof. You can tighten the noose all you want, but determined people will find work arounds. Whom are the TSA trying to fool?

Full Body Scanner FAILS To Detect Bomb Parts During Demonstration (24.01.2010)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/0..._n_433286.html

Yeah...well...don't blame yourself.

When the primary objective is to troll, the posts often have no point.

That's because you've assumed there is one.

There are no 'determined people'.

if there were they would take a bomb to the local mall. To the ball game. To a hundred places where there is NO security or lackse security.

They could even do a dummy in one place - even an airport - to divert attention and then hit another place left unguarded.

It hasn't happened in ten years and it won't in the next ten.

There are several possible reasons for this:

One would be that our glorious leaders are so on the ball they have every base covered and we owe them a debt of gratitude for our very lives.

Another might be that our glorious leaders are lying through their teeth and exploiting a threat that is very minor to make profit and control the populace.

I know which one I would tend to believe.

I vote for the first one, because we know the second isn't even remotely possible.

You have to admit that he's got a bit of a point. I mean if someone really wanted to wreak havoc and create terror there are a TON of far less secure places in the US in which to do it. Shopping malls just to start. That's the weakest spot. And the best place to do it. People just enjoying a little harmless shopping. What could be more pleasant, calm and safe than that. Schools are another place. A car or truck bomb in the middle of a major highway during rush hour. In the city I live hear if that were done at just the right spot it would also paralyze the city transportation by at least temporarily disabling a major north/south and east/west thoroughfare all at the same time.

Pretty much.

All of them have very anomalous aspects - which are never even considered and shouted down when mentioned - and none have ever had evidence provided to prove they are al-Qaeda.

But you don't have to look at it from that angle - look at it like this: say all these ARE al Qaeda. then al Qaeda are STILL not a threat.

They concentrate only - and lamely - on airports and are routinely discovered. No matter how much heavy tech is being brought into airports at massive passenger inconvenience THEY WILL KEEP FOCUSSING ON AIRPORTS AS THEY HAVE DONE SOLELY FOR THE LAST TEN YEARS.

So no worries...it;s a safe bet that if they do exist they are too stupid to try and target something else: mass public gatherings, shipping, shopping centres etc. All of which they could do much easier and with far higher chance of success.

So...they are nothing to worry about are they?

Of course there is another possibility.

If the terrorists attacked us because "they hate our freedoms," maybe they don't have as much reason to hate us now.

\

Hehe...

This has got me thinking though.....was there EVER a time when there wasn't some form of fear exerted on to the populace?

I don't think so...

It takes many forms but certainly in my lifetime I cannot remember a time when it was not applied. It's not always terrorists of course.

When I was a teenager it was AIDS - disinfo and plain false info pushed at you at every turn. The aim was never to help you avoid HIV - though it did exist - the aim was something else; and it was blown out of all proportion.

In earlier times it was a fear of hell.

In certain restrictive regimes it is more explicitly stated as a real fear of the Secret Police say.

Not so long ago - and still in some people's minds - it was 'The Commies'.

It always exists and it is always a form of control - ie to have the populace BECOME AN ACCOMPLICE to their own enslavement (see this thread for text-book examples of the end-product of this process).

It is always built on a small degree of truth. It has to be or it runs the risk of being unmasked and not working - but it is always magnified thousands of times.

That's how they do it. That's how fear works.

I think Bush tipped his hand soon after 911 when he said the appropriate response was to go out and shop.

It really does not go much deeper than that. Desire for power and money + lack of morals & conscience = ability to use anything to control anyone anytime.

Fear helps keep the rabble under control. Those in control like it that way; it's been their preference for centuries.

Life is unpredictable and occasionally tragic, yet people crave predictability with such fervor that they'll settle for the illusion of it. Don't think so? Consider that when a horrific event occurs, such as the WTC attacks, the JFK assassination, even a hurricane like Katrina, some prefer to console themselves that it was an "inside job" - that someone with nefarious intent must have orchestrated some tragedy for their personal gain. Evil prospers in the aftermath of these events, less so by the acts themselves. Fear is evil's currency, and we're paying. The so-called "news media" thrives upon it.

As far as security is concerned, airport TSA is theater. Nothing more. Its intrusiveness has already compromised the liberty hundreds of thousands fought and died for us to enjoy. The TSA can do nothing prevent another terrorist attack - as you said, if bad guys really wanted to hurt us, they could in any number of creative ways. Perhaps they will. It's nearly certain their next attack will bear little resemblance to their last though. Like life, they're not predictable. Yet the fearful among us (and there are many) will beg and plead for their nanny-state government to do something - anything! Take our freedoms, take our guns, search our homes, my wife's bra, my child's crotch.

Shred the damn Constitution. It's only temporary, right? The DHS threat level will surely go back to some friendlier color real soon now, right? Just give us back our illusion of safety.

Bread, circuses... and fear. Nothing changes.

Anything that keeps people from flying is the green and good thing to do. That's saving the planet. I am for oral and anal searches not only when you get into the gate but at least 5 times before you get on the plane and also when you get off the plane just incase. THINK GREEN.

So your position is:

they are dedicated to our destruction

but they refuse to take advantage of the many opportunities to do so and get away with it.

Right.

Baa. Baa.

I don't think it does exist. Al Qaeda is merely a media buzz word.

What does exist - again imo, could be wrong - is numerous disparate Islamist groups on the one hand and numerous wannabe terrorist lone nutters on the other.

I seriously question whether these two interact.

Put it this way - you are a professional secret terror cell or group. Some wannabe idiot from some urban estate with a chip on his shoulder wants to join up. I think not.

Of course if these lone extremists prove themselves they may get assimilated but that takes perhaps traveling to Afghanistan and putting your life on the line and making some effort for a few years.

Many don't hack it and do a bit of home-made DIY - I think the 7/7 London bombers were of this sort. They may get support from radical mosques perhaps but this again is not 'al Qaeda'.

Al Qaeda was OBLs one time outfit. I do not think they exist any longer. It's questionable they ever did. I'm not sure he ever used the term for his grouping - though interestingly, now the West has set this up as a sort of 'uber-threat' many Islamists do play on that and claim to be so to tap into the fear associated with it.

Also I have to question 'dedicated to our destruction'. Where do you get that? OBL's original group had specific goals and that was not one of them.

Other groups have their own goals and very few are of that nature to my knowledge.

This +1.

Bombing the Hot Topic at the mall doesn't grab headlines.

Bullshit. Someone straps some dynamite to their body. Walks into a shopping mall in the middle of the day on "Black Friday" and detonates it, we'll be talking about it for weeks. Some groups tries a coordinated attack against multiple malls (or nightclubs or schools) at the same time and we'll all be subject to porno-scans or Mall Cop sexual assault in order to go shopping.

I had to read this three times....

And I still don't get it.

You SEEM to be saying that a massive terror attack on a shopping mall in the US would not grab headlines.

Wtf???

You know there's a certain depressing irony in the possibility that the TSA has caused more deaths since its inception than the terrorist attacks of 9/11 did by "encouraging" more people to forgo airline travel in favor of the less safe automobile travel.

There are about 40,000 automobile-related fatalities in the US every year. If that number went up by only 1% as a result of people who chose to drive instead of fly because of TSA bullshit "security" procedures, then more people have died (approximately 4,000) because of the TSA than did because of the terrorists.

I live very close to one of those opportunities: the Mexican border.

Isn't it possible that one of those millions who have strolled across the border could be a "terrorist dedicated to our destruction"?

So...where are the mall bombings? Marketplace bombings happen all the time in the Middle East, and we're told they're all done by "evil terrorists dedicated to our destruction".

If we don't put the government in its place with regard to these scanners and pat-downs, we could very well soon be forced to pass through roadway checkpoints, where we would be subjected to the same thing, including having our cars searched.

What will people like Wormhole say then? Driving is not a civil right! Don't like it? Don't drive!

Well, at least the pilots will get their way. Once they do expect their outrage and frustration to quietly fade away. Then the peons are all left on their own.

True enough. After all it's not the "Airport Security Administration" or the "Air Travel Security Administration" it is the "Transportation Security Administration."

Actually it's not. Your have to pass a test and then you are licensed by the state. Your driving privileges can be revoked at any time by the state----OBTW--driving a motor vehicle isn't mentioned in the Constitution.