TSA: Total Sexual Abuse

The TSA continues to molest passengers in the name of security. Oddly Israel, which has more problems with terrorism than the US, manages to secure their flights without any of these antics. Israeli anti-terrorism experts say the TSA is doing more harm than good and and that all of this is a waste of money which gives no additional security.

But the ass-licker authoritarians are lining up to lick a region on Janet Napolitano that would get intimate pat downs, if Janet were subjected to the same indignity as the peons.

There are two responses to this that disgust me. The first is the closet Nazi who says whatever the government wants the government should get. These people belong in Cuba or North Korea, not in America. The second type are the morons who live life in terror of every threat and demand exaggerated, usually counter-productive measures thus creating more harm than good.

After Columbine we saw "zero tolerance" on "weapons." But, in typical government fashion, that means things so broadly defined that one kid was expelled from school for pointing a fish finger at another kid and going "pow." A kid with a GI Joe figure, that was holding a tiny plastic toy gun, was expelled for bringing a weapon to school. And the same moronic mentality was at play there with some brainless parents coming up with BS like: "well, if it saves one life, it's worth it."

This second group is not nearly as repulsive as those slaves yearning for the leash, they are just stupid. The first group, however, while it may include the terminally dumb, usually is made up of people who yearn for a Hitler or Mao to take control. Stupid people can be taught, but these authoritarians are so morally deficient that they are hopeless and they do pose a threat to American constitutional government. We have always had those who the yearn the leash, just these days these cowards, afraid to live as free men, seem proud of their servantile mentality.

Here's the real kicker. The travel Gestapo charges everyone one of us for the cost of having them hire people to fondle our junk. But now that the TSA thugs are spending more time fondling breasts, butts, scrotums and dicks, to pretend to make us safer, their costs have gone up, so the TSA is saying they will have to charge us more money.

I guess this means it isn't sexual molestation after all, if you pay people to touch your genitals it is normally called prostitution. However, in prostitution the fondling and exchange of cash are voluntary and in this case neither are, so perhaps we are dealing with with molestation and extortion. It reminds me of the authoritarian dystopia depicted in Terry Gilliam's marvelous 1985 film Brazil. The regime in the film arrests one Harry Buttle, when in fact they wished to arrest Harry Tuttle. Buttle is grabbed out of his home, black bagged and disappears into a system of "extraordinary rendition" when he dies. The bureaucrats send his widow the bill for the raid, along with charges for cremating his body. We are not in Orwell's 1984 but in Gilliam's Brazil. The Orwellian regime merely violated your rights, they didn't then bill you for the privilege.

Why the TSA is more dangerous than terrorists.

I've got news for you, my fellow Americans, the federal Transportation Safety Administration, part of the Homeland Security Gestapo has a better chance of killing you than any terrorist.

Let's do the math.

How many people died this year, in the US, from terrorist attacks? None. Last year? None. 2007? None. There was one attack a decade ago that was awful but for the previous 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, there was nothing. Certainly the chances are that next year no Americans will be killed in a domestic attack by terrorists. It will be pretty much like it was in 2010, 2009, 2008 and so on.

So, realistically we can estimate that next year zero Americans will die from terrorists.

So how do the crotch-groping, breast-fondling Travel Nazis manage to kill?

Consider the Homeland Gestapo's new pornoscanners, the devices they set up to take nude images of your bodies, as well as those of your children. Yep, every day the government will be producing child pornography, and your kids, if they fly, will be included.

These devices work by X-ray technology. Now, I don't normally worry about X-rays. Why? First, the number of X-rays I have had in my lifetime is relatively low. This is true for most of us. We don't get X-rayed regularly. In addition the dosage is relatively low. So the risk per person is low. Now, this could still be a problem if extremely large numbers of people were being subjected to X-rays every day of the year. I average less than 1 X-ray per year. I would have to go back about three years for my last X-ray and it was relatively small in that it was a dental X-ray, not a chest X-ray. The last chest X-ray was more than a decade ago. And I've probably had those only five or six times in my life. If I add up all the X-rays I can remember having, it would be around one every five years or so.

And the very few, higher dose chest X-rays I had were really focused on the entire chest. But as scientists from the University of California pointed out, the "new airport scanners are largely depositing their energy into the skin and immediate adjacent issues, and since this is such a small fraction of body weight/vol, possibly by one to two orders of magnitude, the real dose to the skin is now high." These scientists say the X-ray "beam is very intense" in these machines and that a simple malfunction can keep it focused on one area far longer than is safe. And they believe the scanners "will increase the risk of cancer to children and other vulnerable populations."

There are several things to consider here; the most obvious is what is the dose for each trip through the pornoscanner? The government claims the scans have a very low dose and we all know they never lie. But Peter Rez, a physics professor at Arizona State, doubts those claims. He says that an image produced by the X-ray strength the government claims wouldn't produce a usable image. He calculated backwards from the quality of images and says the dose appears to be ten times higher than Homeland Security will admit.

According to Prof. Rez that will translate into a "a 1-in-20-million chance of dying from radiation for each scan." Now, don't you feel better? The chance that you will die because of radiation exposure from one exposure is just one in 20 milion. Of course, if you were the only airline passenger this wouldn't translate into many deaths per year.

But there are over 800,000,000 million passengers flying in the US every year. With 800 million air passengers that would lead to 40 deaths per year from the scanners. That is the same as killing one American every nine days. Now, if terrorists were killing one person every nine days we would be outraged. But when Homeland Security does it, there is little to say about it. While 40 deaths is relative small it is much higher than the number of deaths caused by terrorists last year, or the year before, or this year. And it will probably be more than terrorists kill next year or the year after as well.

Of course, we want to look at lifetime risks. Prof. Rez says that the odds "of being blown up in an airplane by a terrorists is around 1 in 30 million." His own calculations put the odds of death by being scanned with X-rays from the pornoscanner is 1 in 20 million. For every 1 person who would die on average from terrorism, this anti-terrorist measure would kill 1.5 people. The average number of deaths per year due to terrorism would be just under 27 people. This means the preventative measure, by causing approximately 40 deaths, gives us a net loss of life. It will kill more people than it could save. And that is assuming this one measure alone would save the lives with other security measures having zero impact.

If we assume this new security measure alone is responsible for stopping all future terrorist attacks, which is most certainly NOT the case, it would save about 27 lives per year. And the cost would be 40 lives per year to implement it. Does that make sense? But is won't be saving 27 lives per year, it may only change the numbers slightly. If you really think this one measure would be responsible for saving all people who would be killed in an average year by terrorists, then you would happily recommend abolishing all other security measures. But experts in the field of terrorism say measures like intelligence are far more useful than the antics of the TSA with air passengers. These security theater measures only change the odds by a very small margin.

If you think this one X-ray machine does pay off I have an offer. Instead of lives, think dollars. Now, I will gladly pay you $27 for every $40 that you give me. Are you willing to make that sort of trade off with dollars? If not, then why are you willing to make it with lives? And that is even giving the $27 investment too much credit. Since other anti-terrorists measures are better protectors than these pornoscanners, the real return you might expect is $1 back for every $40 you invest. I'll take that sort of investment any day.

And if you don't like the pornoscanner you can "opt out," at which point Homeland Security thugs will subject you to a very aggressive body search which includes rubbing the most intimate parts of your body in a manner not entirely dissimilar from your typical molester. If any member of the public did to you, what government agents will do to you for refusing to be pornoscanned, they would be arrested and jailed as sex offenders.

Based on the risks I think it safe to say that Janet Napolitano, the Reichfurher for Homeland Security, is more of a threat to your life than Osama bin Laden. And Osama is prettier.

Paranoia and Fear: What is Destroying America.

A toy horse is left by a playground, near a school. It is just a stuffed toy horse. But typical of the police state in which we find ourselves there is total and complete over-reaction. The paranoid police show up and put the nearby school into lock down. Dozens of police officers descend on the scene. The bomb squad shows up and the boys in blue use explosives to dispose of the dangerous stuffed horse.

How many tens of thousands dollars did these morons just flush down the toilet because they want to play Homeland Security.

Bin Laden long ago said that all he needed to do was engage in one terrorist attack on the United States and the political classes would then impose billions and billions of additional damage because of their paranoid over-reaction. Bin Laden never felt he could do the damage to America that he wanted to do, but he knew the political classes would do it for him.

More questions on the failed TSA

It is astounding to watch how the Obama administration has been dealing with the most recent incident on a international flight. We should itemize first, all the ways in which the bureaucratic system of governance failed to deal with the problem.

We know that the family of the would-be terrorist, Umar Abdulmutallab, had warned the U.S. government that he had become fanatical in his Islamic beliefs and that they felt he posed a threat. We know the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria was informed and passed the information on to Washington. The U.S. Embassy, however, didn’t revoke Abdulmutallab’s existing visa to fly into the United States. Instead they decided to flag it for more investigation if were to apply for a second visa later on. So, while they felt the threat was possible, they decided to allow him to fly without any further investigation at this time.

Once the information got to Washington the terrorism bureaucracy put Abdulmutallab on the list of possible terrorists and that is all they did. No other action was taken. And when Abdulmutallab purchased a ticket to fly to the U.S., the government warning system on terrorism gave him a clearance, no red flags of any kind were waved. Security personnel were not told that Abdulmutallab deserved any extra scrutiny whatsoever.

Then we learn that Abdulmutallab purchased his ticket at the airport with cash, which our government says is a “red flag” and that he had no checked luggage for his international flight—allegedly another red flag. So we had red flags flapping wildly in the breeze and the terror bureaucracy simply passes Abdulmutallab for the flight. And security personnel never found the explosives that Abdulmtuallab strapped to his leg nor the syringe of liquid he had hidden in his underwear.

Now let’s investigate what did work. Abdulmutallab attempted to light the explosive. It popped, it fizzled, it sparked and it sent off some smoke and some flames. But it didn’t explode, which is pretty much what happened last time this was tried. Passengers immediately saw what happened and jumped Abdulmutallab. Horrors! They left their seats during the last hour of the flight, something that is now forbidden by bureaucratic edict alone. The passengers worked. They grabbed the man, they extinguished the flames, they took him into custody and with crew members handcuffed him. They even strip searched him to make sure he didn’t have other explosives on him. The crisis was averted for two reasons. First is the difficulty of concocting a bomb on the plane means that no explosion took place, only sparks, some flames and smoke. Second is the fact that passengers will act when they have to and are especially vigilante since 9/11.

Yet Reichführer Janet Reno went on television to tell the nation “the system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days.” The New York Times reports: “Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, echoed the positive comments Ms. Napolitano made on ABC’s ‘This Week,’ saying in an interview on ‘Face the Nation’ on CBS that ‘in many ways, this system has worked.’”

Worked for whom? It has given immense powers to unelected bureaucrats. It has created a massive bureaucracy that lives off taxpayers and sucks up to politicians for more goodies. It has stripped Americans of numerous freedoms. But it hasn’t worked in stopping incidents like this.

The government’s famed database on terrorism suspects failed since Abdulmuttalab was listed there. An official for the government told the Times, “The information goes in there, and it’s available to all the agencies. The point is to marry up data from different sources over time that may indicate an individual might be a terrorist.” Unfortunately it appears that the way government works the data is not “married up” until after something happens.

And consider how the government bends over backwards to avoid stereotyping potential terrorists. They will have staff pat down, bark at, search and harass some 90-year-old Anglican nun with a walker even though one fact remains constant for the terrorists and it isn’t that they are Anglicans. The reality is and has been that the attackers are Islamists. In order to not discomfort Muslims the government policy is to waste a lot of time discomforting everyone.

If a women were raped we don’t randomly search people on the street. And the police don’t just go out and start questioning women, old men in wheelchairs and children. The reality is that the rapist going to be a man in virtually case, and he is going to be over a certain age and physically capable of using violence. Resources are not expended on individuals unlikely to have been involved. But at the airports 99% of the effort to find terrorists is diffused among people who are unlikely to be terrorists.

The net result is that the effort is spread out thinly with random individuals being subjected to extra measure mainly for show. Meanwhile the individuals who fit the profile of the typical terrorist—male, young and Muslim—can pass cursory inspections, as Abdulmuttalab did. Since the government refuses to “profile” suspects this means that every passenger, unlikely to be a terrorist, acts as a cover for the terrorists. Government randomly picks passengers for extra scrutiny because the “uncertainty” is supposed to impede the terrorists. But the odds are with the terrorists. Only one out of millions of people is likely to be a terrorist. So the chance of being randomly selected for extra scrutiny is almost non-existent. The only other option is to profile who is chosen for extra security measures but that violates some politically correct worldview and is shunned.

Even Christopher Hitchens seems annoyed at the utter stupidity of the moves by Napolitano. Pesonally I like Hitchens as an individual. We had to work together at one point and our interactions were pleasant and I got a signed copy of God is Not Good out of the deal. But Hitchens was one of those wrapped up in the fever over the war on terror. Perhaps he is starting to figure something out: just because you favor government doing something that would be objectively good doesn’t mean that the government will do the job well. In fact, there is a high chance that they will not only do it badly but make the original problem worse in the process. Hitchens writes:

Why do we fail to detect or defeat the guilty, and why do we do so well at collective punishment of the innocent? The answer to the first question is: Because we can't—or won't. The answer to the second question is: Because we can. The fault here is not just with our endlessly incompetent security services, who give the benefit of the doubt to people who should have been arrested long ago or at least had their visas and travel rights revoked. It is also with a public opinion that sheepishly bleats to be made to "feel safe." The demand to satisfy that sad illusion can be met with relative ease if you pay enough people to stand around and stare significantly at the citizens' toothpaste. My impression as a frequent traveler is that intelligent Americans fail to protest at this inanity in case it is they who attract attention and end up on a no-fly list instead. Perfect.

It was reported over the weekend that in the aftermath of the Detroit fiasco, no official decision was made about whether to raise the designated "threat level" from orange. Orange! Could this possibly be because it would be panicky and ridiculous to change it to red and really, really absurd to lower it to yellow? But isn't it just as preposterous (and revealing), immediately after a known Muslim extremist has waltzed through every flimsy barrier, to leave it just where it was the day before?

What nobody in authority thinks us grown-up enough to be told is this: We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims. Our civil aviation is only the most psychologically frightening symbol of a plethora of potential targets. The future murderers will generally not be from refugee camps or slums (though they are being indoctrinated every day in our prisons); they will frequently be from educated backgrounds, and they will often not be from overseas at all. They are already in our suburbs and even in our military. We can expect to take casualties. The battle will go on for the rest of our lives. Those who plan our destruction know what they want, and they are prepared to kill and die for it. Those who don't get the point prefer to whine about "endless war," accidentally speaking the truth about something of which the attempted Christmas bombing over Michigan was only a foretaste. While we fumble with bureaucracy and euphemism, they are flying high.

Below is a recording of a live announcement from a pilot regarding the new retrictions that Janet "Iron Fist" Napolitano is going to impose in order to give you the illusion that the government is making flying safer. Please act deluded. Failure to act deluded could be cause to harass, threaten, taser, shot, or incarcerate you. Remember, Big Brother is our friend.

Flubbed terrorists known to government.

The Nigerian who tried to light explosive strapped to his leg was known to the U.S. government. Umar Abdulmutallab's name was added to a list of known or suspsected terrorists by the government a month ago. However, when the man's name was run through the database, before he could board his flight, it came up with a green light. There was no warning of any kind. There wasn't even a suggestion that he be put under additional scrutiny. Instead of focusing on people the government KNOWS to be risks the bureaucrats prefer to go after everyone.

There are new restrictions on hand luggage put into place—yet the explosives the man carried were strapped to his leg and never in hand luggage. There is the new regulation confining passengers to their seats yet the man was in his seat when he tried to light the explosive. Abdulmutallab would have been in compliance with all the new restrictions imposed by the government had they been put in place before he boarded the plane. In other words, NONE of the new regulations would have had any impact on the incident. These regulations do not prevent incidents such as the one that happened, that is clear. The incident is merely an excuse for the additional regulations not a justification.

Take the new rule on one piece of carry-on luggage only as an example. Abdulmutallab had only one piece of carry-on luggage. In fact, it was the only luggage he had. Apparently no one found a man flying thousands of miles, with just one piece of hand luggage unusual. His ticket showed him being on his trip for almost two weeks—yet he had no luggage and no one found that unusual. He was on a list of suspected terrorists which exists to allegedly warn airport security about yet the U.S. government gave the man the green light so security staff were not even warned to give the man a bit of additional scrutiny.

Instead of focusing on ways in which the existing failed the bureaucrats like Napolitano look for ways to complicate the lives of innocent people. One month ago our government listed Abdulmutallab as a potential terrorist and yet they approved him to fly without even a hint that he might be a problem. The failure was not the result of too little regulation, as Napolitano is always inclined to think, it was the failure of government. Having the travel gestapo spend more time hassling flyers is no help. All it does is tie up security staff with millions of innocent people.

Since the government knew that Abdulmutallab was a potential risk the most sensible thing to do was to ask security staff to check him out thoroughly. When the man checked-in, was on a list of potential terrorists AND had no checked luggage that should have sent alarm bells ringing. But no one, other than the bureaucrats, knew he was on the list. Security at the airport was never told.

Notice that the failure in security belongs heavily to the bureaucrats in Washington for failing to sound the alarm bell for extra scrutinty. It partially belongs to security staff for not wondering about the absence of luggage. Instead of addressing precisely where security failed, Napolitano pretends the problem was not enough state control and ups the level of regulations stripping Americans of freedom. This is why I don't think there is a war on terrorism, there is a war on freedom however. Everytime some would-be terrorists does something the U.S. government, instead of actually focusing on the individuals with a known tie to terrorism, clamp down on the traveling public.

Photo: Janet Napolitano illustrating how to slowly grab liberty by the throat.

Visas to leave the country?

Governments the world over are dishonest. They routinely lie to the public. And as long as the public is stupid enough to take it, the government will keep dishing it out. An example at the local level is how politicians will grant themselves raises, will expand their budgets, will go on junkets, will create endless agencies and meddle in areas where few people think they should be meddling.

But, when the time comes to pay for these ventures, and the funds are not there, the politicians will go to the public for approval on new taxes. But the new taxes are NEVER for the pay rises, the junkets, and the endless agencies. They can’t get those passed. So those are paid for out of the general budget. When the money runs out the politicians tell people they will cut back spending on fire services and police protection—unless, of course, the public grants them the extra taxes. Of course there is plenty of money for fire and public safety all along. There just isn’t plenty for fire protection, public safety, pay rises, junkets and endless agencies. Politicians, facing budgetary restraints first and foremost threaten cuts in the most popular programs not the least popular. And voters stupidly go along with it most the time.

Politicians are masters of deceit. Consider the “War on Terror” as an example at the national level. People were upset, and rightfully so, about the attack on 9/11, which is now a distant memory. Politicians talk about “stopping terrorism” and then pass measures that control you. The “war on terror” does little to terrorists; witness how Osama bin Laden has been free since the attacks. And 95% of the measures that are passed to control terrorism do nothing to terrorists but strip citizens of their freedoms.

One of the worst offenders, in this sort of deceitful assault on national freedom, has come for Britain’s authoritarian Labour Party government, first under the religious nutcase, Tony Blair, and now under Gordon Brown.

Now, England is tell everyone in the U.K., that if they plan to leave the country, by any means and for any purpose, that they must file with the government a detailed listing of their itinerary. Even people who sail the English Channel are required to file exactly where they will be, and when or face stiff penalties from the increasingly Soviet-style bureaucrats who run England. It has been noted that even those who wish to “swim the English Channel” are required to have their papers in order before stepping into the water or they face criminal prosecution.

This flagrant assault on the travel rights of British subjects will be phased in over the next few years. And anyone caught leaving without this paperwork being filed is open to prosecution. In essence, this amounts to an exit visa on the British public.

Where I stayed in England it was routine for people to hop the Channel to shop in France or Belgium. I considered taking the ferry once just to eat in the restaurant on board as a small excursion. (Please note that was only ferries where the French, not the English, were doing the cooking.) All this, under government proposals, will require one to file all the details of the trip: including your credit card numbers, with the British Travel Gestapo. Most importantly, note that if border officials can now prevent people from leaving the country, and these forms have to be filed before leaving, this gives the government the option to prevent people from exiting.

That will be coming. Of course, it will be justified by something horrendous. But in practice it will be used to control the average person. If you are behind in your property taxes then travel permits to France will be denied. Didn't pay your TV license? Well, then don't expect to attend that football match in Berlin. This measure will not be used to "secure the borders" at all. It will be used to force the British public to comply with the increasingly onerous rules of the Soviet-style regime that Labour has imposed.

I should remind readers that the reason for the explosion of “identity theft” in America is directly the result of measures meant to control “illegals” working in the country. By forcing Americans to divulge such critical information, in countless places (bank, work, apartment hunting, job applications) each citizen ends up giving away their identity by force of law. Identity theft is a problem created by government. In the UK this is even worse since the inept British bureaucrats have admitted that have lost the details of millions of citizens several times over. The more people forms you fill out with your private details the more likely it is that your identity will be stolen.

The London Telegraph claims: “Britain is not the only country to require such information from travel operators. The USA also demands the same information be supplied from passengers wishing to visit America.” Apparently the author of that claim doesn’t recognize the big difference. England is forcing British citizens to file detailed reports if they wish to leave the country. This is not the same thing. Asking visitors to a country to tell you who they are is quite different than controlling the travel plans of your own citizens.

The president of the Automobile Association, Edmund King, said: “Travellers will need to ensure that their passports are up to date and that details are input accurately if they don’t want to end up in a dark room being grilled by border officials.” True. And the very idea that they can happen to citizens spending a weekend in France tells you just how far down the road toward state fascism that England has gone under the Labour Party’s rule.

Of course an unnamed Border Agency spokesman—that is a lowlife liar paid to deceive the public—said this “allows us to secure the UK’s borders….” “Securing the borders” was sold to the public to protect against terrorists coming into the country, not to control the movement of British citizens wishing to leave the country.

As for America, just wait. England is harbinger of things to come to the United States unless people really fight back. I should also note that when you hear some conservative whining about “securing the borders” this is precisely the sort of controls that you should expect that will be imposed on you. Governments really aren’t looking to control people outside their borders. They are looking for ways to shackle their own citizens. And don’t expect Obama to be much different than Bush.

By the way, if I were English and had any options at all, the next trip out of England would be my last. Just don't go back. The same is increasingly applying to the United States as well.

Lesson from a lying cop.

A former cop has decided to come forward and admit his numerous crimes as a police officer. Patrick O’Brien says that in his war on drugs he went to court and lied about evidence every single time, without exception.

This rare confession, unfortunately, does not come from an American police officer since Mr. O’Brien worked in New Zealand. In a shocking letter to the Chief Justice of New Zealand, Dame Sian Elias, O’Brien made his confession. He says he has been racked with guilt over his actions.

Mr. O’Brien says that he can not estimate accurately how many people went to prison due to his lies because he stopped counting when it reached 150. In all the cases where he testified, with invented evidence, he says juries returned guilty verdicts, with just one exception. O’Brien wrote: “In every case I lied to the courts and I lied to the juries to obtain convictions against my targets. Telling lies was easy -- ‘policemen don’t tell lies -- and my targets never stood a chance.”

In addition to lying under oath this ex Drug Warrior says that he tampered with evidence presenting in court drugs which were never confiscated from the person on trial. O’Brien says that the lies destroyed him to the point that he eventually quite the police force and left New Zealand. He says his life was “a tragic waste” and that “in what time is left to me” he intends “correcting the wrong that I have done.”

O’Brien has said he wants to apologize to the many people he victimized and will “assist in whatever way I can” those who wish to seek legal remedy.

In 1944 F.A. Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom. He discussed what happens to a society where is “is one common over-ridding end”. I think Hayek’s perception applies to the sort of moralistic crusades in which Drug Warriors, Moral Majoritarians and others participate. Hayek says once this over-ridding end is agreed upon “there is no room for any general morals and rules” and “it is inevitable that occasionally cruelty may become a duty, that acts which revolt all our feelings... should be treated as mere matters of expediency....”

When I watch the Drug Warriors in action I see Hayek’s warning. They believe they are serving a greater goal and they plow on continuing to do great damage to innocent people. The current antigay campaigns being whipped up by the Mormons and the Catholic Church are similar exercises. No one questions the morality of protecting children from sexual abuse and because no one questions it then it is easy to engage in the sort of crimes against children which this blog has reported on repeatedly.

It behooves libertarians to always question the methods we use to accomplish our gaols. The more convinced we become of the morality of our cause the more tempting it is to use unacceptable methods to achieve them. This can apply to the cause of liberty just as much as to erradicating drug abuse, protecting children or stopping terrorism.

All in all we must be most careful about the causes where we have the fewest doubts. For the more sure we are about the goal we seek, the less likely we are to scrutinize the methods we use to get there.

TSA inspector damages nine planes, puts lives at risk.

The Transportation Security Administration, who I lovingly refer to as the Travel Nazis, have struck again. No, this time they didn’t search a 90-year-old granny in wheelchair -- lest she have bin Laden hidden in her ho-hang. One of their inspectors went much further, at least in terms of the potential harm he could have inflicted. Actually he could have killed people -- lots of people.

This government bureaucrat decided to inspect a group of planes at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. All of them were part of American Eagle, a subsidiary of American Airlines. The brain-dead TSA official wanted to see if he could climb into a airplane from the outside. So he scaled the planes by grabbing on to sensitive equipment on the outside of the planes.

He grabbed devices known as a “total air temperature probe”. These are devices which pilots use to see if they need to de-ice plans in flight. If you don’t de-ice you can crash. If you don’t know you need to de-ice, you don’t de-ice and thus you can crash. So it is important that you know and that means these little suckers are extremely important in saving lives by preventing air plane crashes.

They are so important that there are stickers pasted next to them warning people not to use them as steps. These warnings apparently are heeded by everyone except the inspector from the TSA. Since he is anonymous at this point let us just refer to him as Inspector Clouseau.

Because of Inspector Clouseau’s antics on the tarmac nine commuter aircraft had to be grounded for repairs. Nine planes full of people had their flights cancelled. A spokesman for American Eagle said: “It delayed a lot of folks getting to where they had to go yesterday. This was something we had never experienced before.”

The Allied Pilots Union was furious saying this inspector put a lot of people’s lives in danger. Only in the last level of inspections of the plane, by the pilots before takeoff was the problem noticed. Sam Mayer of the pilot’s union said: “We caught it this time, but who knows if this has happened other times ... and with other planes that are out there.”

Aero-News posted a very irate article on the bumbling inspector. They quoted a pilot on the American Eagle internet forum saying: “The brillant employees used an instrument located just below the cockpit window that is critical to the operation of the onboard computers. They decided this instrument, the TAT probe would be adequate to use as a ladder.” Another pilot said the TSA is “now doing things to our aircraft that may put our lives, and the lives our passengers at risk.”

Aero-News wrote:

This was an extraordinarily dangerous incident, folks. The TSA has neither the mandate nor the knowledge to inspect any aircraft for any reason. The stupidity of this matter is nearly unbelievable... until you hear that the TSA is involved... then it becomes understandable, though still tragic. And I can not tell you how frustrating it is, to see them continue to hurt an industry that they were created to protect.

The TSA has NO BUSINESS putting untrained personnel in a position to damage aircraft. Their bizarre games, in the name of security, do NOTHING to enhance security and do much to inhibit safety. Aviation personnel -- pilots, A&P's, ground personnel -- are all either licensed or supervised by licensed personnel and this kind of tampering, had it been accomplished by anyone else, would have subjected that person to criminal charges.

In this case, ANN strongly recommends and encourages the criminal prosecution of this so-called inspector and his immediate supervisors... it is a matter of time before one of these morons does something stupid and gets someone killed... and with the way these incidents are occurring, we believe it is a virtual certainty that a TSA "Inspector" will hurt or kill someone in such a manner. No kidding.

....We're fed up with the incompetence of this organization... and while it was simply 'annoying' when they were sniffing our shoes or trying to rip off our laptops, it gets downright threatening when they start tampering with our airplanes.

Homeland Security, ally of bin Laden.

The Border Nazis at Homeland Security have struck another blow for fortress America. They are giving the finger to all those nations which share visa free travel with the United States. In other words they are treating our friends rather shabbily. And I suspect the long term result will be more travel hassles for Americans as nations get sick and tired of the morons that Bush put in charge of this unconstitutional, authoritarian agency.

There are 27 countries where visas were not needed for their citizens to visit the United States. In return Americans didn’t need visas to travel there. What the Homeland Reichmarshalls have done is say that anyone from those countries must now register on line with Homeland Security three days before traveling.

Of course the “terrorist” menace is once again used as the excuse. Travel to the United States has suffered do to the assholes that Homeland Security made into little dictators at the airports. Some airlines have re-routed international flights to avoid the United States complete. And that costs the economy millions. Of course the fear-mongers will spout off, “if it just saves one life it is worth it, blah, blah, blah....” Give me a break!

Each little roadblock reduces the number of travelers. But that is what the jerks in D.C. seem to want. They are turning coming up with the worst possible combination of policies. The United States is grossly interventionist, sticking its unwelcomed nose in the affairs of nations around the world. It has soldiers stations in nation after nation without any constitutional justification Yet when it comes to peaceful dealings with the rest of the world the neocons are doing their level best to destroy them.

Immigration is basically cut off except for those who manage to cross illegally. The U.S. is moving away from free trade and back to protectionism under all sorts of excuses. And we are making it more difficult for foreign visitors to come to America. So the U.S. is becoming more isolationists in the true sense of the word while becoming more interventionist.

Of course the two go together. Let’s be honest here, the foreign policy we have was originated by the imperialists and adopted by the Democrats first -- Wilson and Roosevelt were major proponents of global interventionism. Then the Republicans decided to “me-too” the Democrats and become interventionists as well. Of course when you are a major bully harassing nations around the world you make a lot of enemies. And sometimes those enemies want to do nasty things to you. So then you hunker down in your fortress and begin losing the benefits of trade. In the end you become poorer. Of course you need someone to scapegoat so you lash out at foreigners and immigrants. (It isn’t nice looking in the mirror to discover the source of your own troubles.) And around and around it goes.

You piss off more and more of the world and find that more and more people hate you. Of course if you are George Bush you blame them this and never, absolutely never, take any responsibility for screwing up the world with endless interventions.

So who is going to be hurt by this? Terrorists? Nope. If they were planning an attack on the U.S. they would send a sleeper who registers three days in advance. If not that they could fly to Canada and walk across thousands of miles of unprotected borders. The people hurt are the last minute travellers. So if you have relatives overseas and you get deathly ill don’t expect them to be at your bedside unless you can give them at least three days notice of your death.

And businessmen often find that contracts or deals need last minute negotiations. The more high powered the business the more likely it is that they may end up making travel arrangements at the very last minute. If they can’t travel because some overpaid thug at Homeland Security came up with this stupid idea their companies could lose millions. But the bureaucrats don’t care -- they don’t earn money honesty they appropriate it by force from taxpayers. That is how the deal with us in ever way -- they threaten and intimidate and coerce. They don’t know the art of exchange, of giving value for value. They simply take what they want and demand obedience.

Here is what I predict. You will soon see the nations that are being harassed by Homeland Security retaliating against Americans by doing the same thing to us. So don’t bother looking for any “last minute” deals on travels -- sure they might be there but unless you register on line three days before hand (which you can’t do with a lot of last minute travel deals) you can’t go. And that will make travel for everyone a little more expensive. How? Right now the travel industry often fills empty spaces with last minute deals to reduce any loses from being under booked. If that becomes more difficult then those cost get recouped by higher fees.

We ought to admit that bin Laden outsmarted Dubya -- of course I’ve had bowel movements that could outsmart him. Bin Laden said that the way he would punish America for intervening in the Middle East. He said he would “bleed America to the point of bankruptcy.” All he had to do was one attack and the politicians would jump in and finish his job for him. They would destroy the economy by confiscating billions and billions of private capital in order to regulate what is left to death. They would stifle creativity and trade. They would regulate travel and reduce freedom for Americans. And the costs would accumulate and accumulate until a collapse is inevitable.

So Bush and Homeland Security and conservatives spouting about Islamo-fascism are actually the best friends that bin Laden has. They continue to wipe out billions in production in order to fund their paranoid “security state”. At the same time they are hurting trade directly and reducing wealth through all their senseless regulations. Bin Laden knew what he was doing. He knows politicians better than the voters. All he needed do was one attack on the United States several years ago and George Bush would do the rest of the job for him.

The real terrorists who are harming America today are in the White House and the Congress and especially in Homeland Security. As horrific as the bin Laden's attack was these bureaucrats have superseded it in every way. Bush has killed more Americans in Iraq than bin Laden killed on 9/11. The government has inflicted more economic damage fighting terrorism than the terrorists caused themselves. Fear mongering politicians are truly the Fifth Column of the al Qaeda.

The war on your privacy.

I want you to do a thought experiment. In your head list some of the things you may have on your laptop that you don’t want anybody else to see.

You might immediately think of illegal things and protest. But don’t. Surely there are entirely legal items that you have on your laptop which you wish or need to keep private. Let me list some possibilities to get you going.

Do you have bank account information on your computer? Maybe you have passwords for banking sites which would allow others to transfer your funds if they got hold of them?

You might be a businessman who has classified corporate information on your laptop which, if leaked, might give a competitor an advantage over you and do severe harm.

Maybe you sat down and wrote some highly personal thoughts about aspects of your life. You might have been depressed and wrote about some suicidal thoughts. Or perhaps you wrote about how you cheated on your partner or how they cheated on you. You might have written down fantasies that you never intend to carry out.

Maybe you have some highly personal photos of yourself or your partner.

Once you have your list go to the second part of this thought experiment. How would you feel if you discovered that someone had gone through those items? Would you feel violated? Angry? Disgusted?

Remember I have stipulated that you list items where you have done nothing wrong. With that in mind would you still have highly negative feelings about someone violating your privacy in this way?

After all what kind of low-life would do that to someone? When we discover that people have actually gone through other people’s computers in this manner we would think very poorly of the person who did it. In fact we would probably call it criminal. What kind of scum would do this?

That’s easy to answer. U.S. government border nazis. Here are the facts.

Government border “agents” regularly search the contents of laptops. Now you may remember something about “reasonable cause” being involved when it comes to government searches. Not anymore. The courts have ruled that border thugs don’t need reasonable cause. They may search your lap simply because they don’t like your face.

If a border agent finds a rather attractive model with her lap top coming through he might decide to see if she has any personal photos on her laptop. He can then force her to boot up the laptop and demand that she open any files he requests including information as to her where she lives, her phone number or diaries about sexual encounters if she has them there. If he finds nude photos of her that is sufficient for him to confiscate the computer for a more thorough search -- this in spite of the fact that the photos are entirely legal.

He can then walk off with her laptop and it disappears into the bureaucratic bowels of federal agents. Now nothing illegal may be found. But when our model gets her laptop back, which can be months later, she will never know who copied her photos and passed them around. And the courts say this is all legal.

The government argues that at borders the federal thugs can do anything they want and you have no right to complain. Actually, if they can do whatever they want you have no rights whatsoever. One expert, Mark Rasch, a former head of the Justice Department’s computer crime unit, described the position of the Feds:

The consequences of the government's argument would be that they could, at the border, seize your daughter's iPod and lock her up if they thought the songs were not licensed. They could copy the entire contents of your computer, read your e-mail, medical records, communications with doctors, lawyers, or priests. They could examine deleted files, create a database of your friends and associates, and provide any or all of this information to the CIA, Interpol, the NSA, the FBI, or for that matter, the Iraqi intelligence services. All without probable cause, suspicion, or warrant, because you had the unmitigated gall to cross the border with your laptop.

And don’t think encryption will necessarily help. They also take the position that they may force you to provide the keys to open any encrypted files. In fact, I would bet that they would particularly want to investigate encrypted files.

The government contends that this device called a laptop is exactly like your suitcase. Well, perhaps it would be if you routinely kept all your private correspondence, your banking account details, private photos, and reams and reams of documentation about your life, in your suitcase. Of course you would be over the weight limits so it is unlikely you would do this.

If you have a suitcase sitting out in the open you don’t fill it with you most personal information. But your expectations are that you laptop is private. The government says that all this personal information makes no difference. After all it is reasonable to “protect” the country from . (Fill in the blank with whichever bogey man is the government scare story of the day.)

Mr. Rasch, however, points out that if “protecting the country” makes all such searches reasonable then there is no limit to what the King, I mean the government, may do. But what about flying within the country, where you never cross an international border? Remember that none of the 911 hijackers grabbed an international flight -- they were all on domestic flights. Mr Rasch writes:

A search at the border is permissible because it is "reasonable." It is "reasonable" because the government has a good reason to do it -- to protect the borders. But, just try flying domestically without being patted down and having your luggage examined. Certainly such a "search" on a domestic flight is "reasonable." Oh, and on a train or bus as well. Try entering any federal property, such as a federal office building, military facility, or courthouse. You and your belongings are subject to search, but does this give carte blanche for examining, copying, or analyzing the contents of electronic devices at any of these places? I think not.

While Mr. Rasch might not think government should have such powers remember we are dealing with the Bush Administration. And the Bush team doesn’t believe that government power is limited in any way. Bush has said that he can do anything he damn well pleases just as long as his pea brain tells him that it is for “national security.”

Angry in-law gets innocent man deported as terrorist.

Apparently if you have grudge against someone the dotards in Homeland Security are ever so willing to help you carry out it out. AFP news service reports on a story in the Swedish daily Sydsvenska Dagbladet.

Allegedly a man, in the process of divorcing of wife, needed to travel to the United States on business. She insisted that he not go saying she was not feeling well and insisting that the take care of their children. The man ignored that request and took his flight to the U.S. as planned.

His father-in-law was not happy with this and decided to send an email to U.S. officials asserting, without any evidence, that his son-in-law was an al-Qadea operative. He told the U.S. authorities what flight his son-in-law was taking.

Upon arrival in the United States the man found himself under arrest, handcuffed and interrogated and held in a jail cell until he was deported.

The father-in-law is now in trouble in Sweden but claims that they he didn’t think the “authorities were so stupid that they would believe anything.”

Is this the sort of evidence the government finds sufficient to arrest people and deport them? The father-in-law offered no evidence whatsoever yet his email was sufficient reason for the government to act. And I have to wonder if it is possible to illicit this same sort of response from anonymous complaints as well.

If this story is true then it ought to worry anyone who has the misfortune of flying the unfriendly skies of the the United Soviets of America. It would mean that anyone who wanted to harass you could pop into an internet cafe and send off an anonymous tip claiming you are a terrorist. And when you try to catch your flight, or you land, you could find yourself being harassed by the travel gestapo and all done without a shred of evidence.

Bush policies sap billions from economy.

The Bush police state marches on imposing billions in additional costs on people. The New York Times today mentioned that US citizens are now waiting hours at border posts before they can return home. People are missing important appointments and businesses along the border are suffering.

Thousand and thousands of American live over the border but work in the United States. They are facing delays of two hours or more when they drive into the United States and this is while the border thugs are merely implementing new policies periodically. When they are fully in place the delays will be longer.

You may remember that the Homeland Security brownshirts pushed through new controls on Americans requiring everyone to have a passport to reenter the US even if they had only been in Toronto for s short visit. (In some places in the US crossing the border may mean visiting the neighbor across the street.)

In addition the border agents are now routinely using the photo ID that you must present to call in your name and have the government run checks on you before you are allowed to go home.

The New York Times reports that the new border polices are “discouraging visitors and shoppers and upsetting local business.”

The paper notes that 234 million crossings into the United States take place every year. Of course many U.S. citizens who live near the border make multiple entries so this is not 234 million visitors. If the wait time averages only one hour that is 234 million hours wasted. Even at minimum wage rates the cost in wait time alone is over a billion dollars at the Mexican border alone. And the government is spending another $3 billion to cause the screw ups.

Reichmarshal W. Ralph Basham, head of “Customs and Border Protection” dismisses the impositions on millions of people claiming, “A safer border is well worth the wait.” Of course he’s not the one waiting and neither is there one shred of evidence that all the controls and costs have increased security. Please remember that all the 9/11 terrorists were given permits to vist the U.S. and that none came in by land but by air. None were U.S. citizens, who are the actual targets of these new controls.

Reichmarshal Basham is not paying the cost for waiting. He’d get a wave through if he ever had to cross by land. And he is a net beneficiary. He is paid to impose controls on others. So not only is he not paying the costs he is profiting because of them.

One American citizen, Wilda Laboy has a job in Mexico, lives in the United States and is studying in the States. She says that she is now routinely late for classes because it can take up to three hours to get home. About $332 billion in trade takes place with Mexico and most of it is moved by truck. In El Paso 21,000 people per day walk across the border for shopping.

If Americans think they are having a hard time the United States travel Nazis are making impossible for tourists and others to visit the United States. Numerous surveys show that tourists, world-wide, say the United States travel thugs treat visitors worse than any other country. One result is that millions of people are avoiding the United States entirely costing billions more in lost income. And some airlines now avoid US airports for stop-overs because all passengers on board must be fingerprinted and pass through passport control, even if the flight is just refueling. Vancouver has attracted flights that used to fly through Los Angeles. I have no idea how much that is costing the economy.

And the Washington Post had a story yesterday about how the Bush control are harming arts and culture. One of the oldest symphony orchestras in England, celebrating their 150th anniversary, was invited to play at Lincoln Center. But to get their visas they were told that every single member of the orchestra was required to travel to London, from their home in Manchester, to be personally interviewed. They also had to fingerprinted like common criminals and have facial-recognition scans taken (it will be a matter of time before the government forces this on U.S. citizens but I predict it will happen.)

The orchestra started looking at the cost to get every member to London, they would have to be put in hotel and they had to pay for visas and interviews and hassles that the travel Nazis are imposing. The additional costs for these people were $80,000 and the orchestra decided that they didn’t want to come to America anymore. Just consider how much income was lost to the U.S. because of that.

It’s a large orchestra. Photos I saw seem to indicate close to 100 members. Cheap airfare would be around $550. Hotel costs would run at least $100 per night per person. Food costs, on a budget would $25 to $50 per person per day. Of course they’d buy other things as well. And an orchestra usually fly around the world for more than just one day. And there is the lost revenue to the Lincoln Center because of concerts where no tickets can be sold.

The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage holds a major Folklife Festival every year with performers from around the world. To bring in performers from Bhutan they had to fly them India for interviews in order to obtain visas. Didier Le Besque, agent for Ballet Biarritz said that it cost $48,000 in costs just to get the ballet troupe to the U.S. Embassy in Paris for interviews.

The Post article mentioned that due to these restrictions one $250,000 tour by the Peking Opera of Jilin was cancelled due to the fact the U.S. wouldn’t give visas to the Opera members -- right, bin Laden has trained Operatic terrorists who hit a high note and blow up Washington. It can takes months for visa applications to be processed but wonderful bureaucrats offer an expedited service for visiting artists. And the extra cost is only $1,000 per person.

It can take so long to process the paperwork that a group of business that deal in the performing arts pushed for an allowance that the artist can file for a visa one full year in advance. The normal six month advance permit didn’t give them enough time to get approval and still book their tours. And each time a performing artist wishes to visit the U.S. he must travel to a U.S. embassy, get fingerprinted and have photos taken even if he has already been fingerprinted and interviewed several times. This requirement must be repeated every single time.

The paper says that the $1,000 expedition fee is basically mandatory or the U.S. embassy is unlikely to process the applications in time for performances. The band New Model Army has applied in the past and received their visas in plenty of time for three previous tours so they declined the offer of paying the extra $1,000 for each visa. This year their applications took months to process and when they queried about the delays they were told that it was not possible to trace the applications unless the $1,000 had been paid. The band missed their tour. Their visas were turned down on a technicality that could have been cleared up easily had they been told about it in time. But with the U.S. embassies take months and months to approve one visa application they didn’t find out in time. How many hundreds of thousands, or millions, was lost due to one tour being canceled?

The Post says that there are 7,000 individuals who do the bookings for performing artists. Before the Bush administration 5,250 of them worked with international artists. As the United States becomes more and more aggressive against visitors agents have stopped even trying to bring the performers in. Of those who previously brought in artist one in five have already stopped doing it.

China’s Golden Dragon Acrobats have been performing in the United State for thirty years. But their tour this year is now on hold since the U.S. is refusing to grant them visas even though there have no incidents with the performers in the past. Various music groups have cancelled performing in the United States as a result of these hassles.

I used to routinely purchase and export books from the United States to other countries. After Bush got his ideas to clamp down on freedom one supplier after another just stopped selling to anyone outside the United States. They said that the extra paperwork and regulations they had to go through just to mail one box of books was no longer worth it and the quiet selling to anyone outside the United States. I have no idea how many such distributors have decided to just close down sales to foreign countries as a result. But Bush doesn’t care -- he’s on a crusade against “evil doers” and “terrrists”

Here’s the sickening thing about all this. Bin Laden and the Taliban drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Their strategy was a simple one. They said that one attack in one area would force the Soviets to spend millions of dollars in response. The terrorists can’t defeat militarily and they know it. But for a relative few dollars they can impose millions of dollars in damage -- not direct but indirectly. Bin Laden openly said that any attack on the U.S., even if it had failed would push panic stricken politicians to impose billions and billions in costs on the economy.

Over time the economic damages of these measures add up. It is safe to say that the economic damage directly caused by 9/11 is now insignificant to the economic damage caused by Bush in his panicky response to a problem that he clearly doesn’t understand. His response has already lead to the deaths of more Americans than the attack did. And now he helping bin Laden reach his goal of inflicting massive harm on the American economy by a Stalinist-like crack down that continues to escalate with no regard for the liberties lost or the billions wasted. Bin Laden is clearly smarter than Bush, but then so my sock, and he knows that Bush is the one who can harm America. When the moron in the White House said that our enemies “never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we” it may have been the one truthful statement Bush has made in his entire eight years. If you are one of the Bushites who don’t think he said that play the video for yourself. The best you can say it that it’s a Freudian slip, the unintentional revelation of something that is true.

Democrats: what the hell is your party doing? Why are they letting Bush continue with his disasters? And if you guys are so against this war why is foreign policy neoconservative leading the Democratic pack of candidates?

Police have flour panic attack in New Haven.

The United States is sinking deeper into a mass psychosis. I’m ashamed to say it but Americas are nuts. They are crazy. The United States is a walking challenge to theories of Thomas Szasz -- who I happen to like. I know what Szasz would say since he said it to me once before when I asked him about a rather mental individual I knew: “Just because he isn’t mentally ill doesn’t mean he’s not crazy.” So we’ll leave out the references to illness and merely say America has gone off the deep end.

To illustrate the insanity lets cover a German running club called the Hash House Harriers. I first heard of them when living in Germany. The group is more of a social club than anything else and was founded in Kuala Lumpur in 1938. It basically involved individuals running a course through a city and then meeting for drinks at the end. They like to say they are a “drinking club with a running problem”.

The name comes from the nickname of the boarding house where the founders were living at the time -- the Hash House, a reference to the food by the way. So don’t get any ideas.

Originally a “hare” would lay out a track using paper. It would include false leads as well. But in recent years their environmental sentiments required abandoning the paper and using chalk or flour instead. And this is where the trouble started indicating the pure insanity of the United States, especially the police.

This little incident took place in New Haven, Connecticut. Daniel Salchow and his sister, Dorothee, who are Harriers were involved in a local race. Dorothee was visiting from her native Germany and Daniel, a physician, now lives in the United States (part of the brain drain created by Germany’s medical system). They were the Hares laying out the trail that the runners had to follow. And they used biodegradable flour to mark the routes and lay down the clues -- there is a system of intricate symbols.

They decided the runners should have to make their way through the local IKEA parking lot.

The two were obviously seen sprinkling flour marks on the ground. And the local morons in the police department were called. Unable to recognize flour when they see it the police evacuated the IKEA and closed it for the rest of the day. A spokeswoman for the Mayor said: “You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know. It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We’re thankful it wasn’t, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out.”

I sometimes think that moron ought to be spelled MORON. The panicked police and moronic mayoral office didn’t figure out anything. They didn’t have the collective brain to figure it out. In reality, Daniel Salchow found out that the police and politicians were making a mountain out of a flour pile and he went back to the IKEA to inform them that their paranoia was a bit over the top. He explained the race and the flour markings to the dumbstruck officials.

That was a mistake. He should have left these brain dead bureaucrats to stew. His simple explanation resulted in him, and his sister, being arrested and charged with a felony. And the clowns in New Haven government say they intend to sue the brother and sister to cover the costs of their absurd over-reaction.

Apparently if some idiot in public office has a panic attack over nothing, and manages to inflict financial harm on their community as a result, it is not the silly bureaucrat’s fault. They immediately blame the people who they victimized with an arrest over nothing. What kind of idiots are sitting in public office? Estimates are that the city flushed $50,000 down the toilet in the Great Flour Panic of 2007.

The Harriers set out race courses around the world using the same methods. No one else has gone into panic mode over it despite races being held in dozens of countries.

Another bureaucrat, the local fire chief, argues from the “precautionary principle” -- a disastrous philosophical premise that justifies any hysteria over any imaginary threat. He says the hysterical Keystone cop reaction to flour was “prudent” because “Until such time they are able to prove differently (that the substance was not hazardous), we had to act very prudently.”

Basically the precautionary principle was invented by some Greens to as a fail safe measure to stop everything. Unless something is proven to be safe it is assumed to be unsafe. Proving a negative is impossible thus progress is stalled. In this case the theory was used over harmless flour. But what doesn’t fit? This basically reverses the burden of proof in the legal system to guilty until proven innocent. It is a major philosophical reversal of Western liberal values and the detrimental impact it will have has been ignored. This is just one case, albeit a particularly absurd case.

People need to realize that the precautionary principle is inherently tyrannical. It justifies government restriction on all actions unless, and until, those actions can be proven to be harmless. Oddly this principle never seems to apply to legislation, restrictions, or regulations of any kind. It is always applied to the private sector and never to the state.

I can think of several reasons that white powder might be on the ground. If the police are going to panic over every such incident life will become hell. At some point Americans have to come to their senses and realize that the responses are more dangerous than the actual threats.

But Americans have been flushing their Constitutional Rights down the toilet with such zeal that one has to wonder. Personally I’m glad that this incident happened, though I’m sorry for the couple who were stupidly arrested. Only such clownish antics by government bureaucrats will wake some people up to the extreme measures that have been implemented in the United States. Once the people see the bureaucrats as clowns then they may demand their freedoms back. Me, I prefer to see them as clowns, the alternative to that is far scarier. No doubt many are just clowns. Some are authoritarians at heart. And some, like King George, manage to be both at the same time. Welcome to America.

Hat tip to the wonderful Wendy McElroy who I manage to like more each day!.

Fly the Unfriendly Skies -- courtesy of Big Brother.

I have said it in the past, and I will say it again. Avoid flying into the United States. If you are flying to any country that may require a stop over, or even refueling in the Unites States, don’t take it. You will be treated like a criminal. You may well be manhandled by ill-mannered, arrogant, thugs who work for the Department of Homeland Security. These are the security police. Their authority is boundless and they can make your life a living hell if they wish and periodically these cretins do so just for the entertainment value.

Now many people have no desire to actually travel to the United States but some airlines may stop over to refuel or they may have to catch a connecting flight. Don’t do it. First, you will need to clear passport control and customs. They you will be required to recheck your luggage and reboard. What you could comfortable do in freer times in one hour will now take you four hours or more.

It is is also possible that you may be denied entry to the United States. If that happens you will not be allowed to catch your connecting flight out of the US. You will be deported back to your point of origin and your record will be stamped that you were denied entry into the United States. Depending on where you are from you may need a visa just to change planes. And that is time consuming and costly.

On top of this the United States security police will take your photos and your fingerprints as if you are a common criminal. Your data will go into the Big Brother data base the United States is compiling on every person they can. The reality is that the US government now treats all people as if they are criminals and threats people anyway they wish. I can assure you that the travel industry, the airline employees from flight crew to baggage crew and airport employees mostly despite and hate the petty little thugs that DHS has put in charge of the airports.

I read travel forums to see what visitors to the United States are saying about their experiences. They aren’t selling a story, merely reporting their own experiences. An Australian tells of traveling with his family. At the US airport the “security” people were screaming at tourists. His youngest child was “selected” for additional security -- might be bin Laden in disguise you know. The child is afraid and the security thugs refused to allow the mother or the father to be near the child to comfort him. The terrified child started crying. I know how he feels. He tried to complain and was lectured that America is different now and get used to it. He said: “What the hell has happened to the country lately? I love the US, I love traveling there, I love the people, but where did they dig up these security people?”

Now I see that airline pilot Patrick Smith, at Salon is complaining. He says: “When it comes to airport security, we've been sheep from the very beginning, but this emerging pattern of willing submission to vague, unconfirmable threats from invisible "terrorists" is pushing things to a new level.”

He recounts a story where there was some sort of altercation on a plane with Clay Aiken the singer. Passengers were kept in their seats until DHS officials could interview individuals. One passenger wrote that a cabin crew member said: “This is 2007, and you need to watch what you say on a plane.” This sort of thing, when I was growing up, you only heard in films set behind the Iron Curtain or in Nazi Germany. Not anymore. Welcome to the Unfriendly Skies of Homeland Security.

This sort of authoritarianism is impacting travel to the United States as travelers now try to avoid transit through the country. And I don’t blame them. Unfortunately, when America was a free country, it prospered and airlines there blossomed. As a result many connecting flights still travel through the United States.

But capitalism sees a need and starts to fill it. I know a lot of Kiwis were shocked when they discovered that flights to London, via the United States, meant they would be subjected to interrogations, fingerprinting, hours of hassles, and rude actions by arrogant little people in uniforms. Now Air New Zealand has responded.

For years it flew to London, from Auckland, with Los Angeles as the stopover. They have now dropped LA airport and divert planes to Vancouver instead. Air New Zealand is letting people know that their flights will allow people to never set foot inside the United States. Gee, George isn’t that just great for the reputation of the country?

They aren’t alone. Air Canada used to fly to Sydney with a stopover in Hawaii. That meant stopovers required all the problems that Bush has inflicted on world travelers. Air Canada is dropping the Hawaii stopover and advertising to travelers this “will enable global travelers to avoid the United States.”

Wikitravel has a page of information on how travelers can reach various parts of the world, from other parts of the world, without ever setting foot behind the Iron Curtain. This is what has happened to America in the last few years. People are now going out of their way to avoid American soil. Airlines are now advertising flights with routes which are created to avoid US territory.

I suspect it is only a matter of time, if it doesn’t already exist, that some entrepreneurial travel agency will establish a web site to help travelers, anywhere in the world, book flights that will take them where they need to go without stopovers or refueling stops within US territory. The US government has made life at airports so unpleasant that people are willing to pay extra just to stay out of the country.

Not long ago I spoke with an old friend who lives in Canada with her American husband. They recently traveled to China. In conservative jargon that would be “Communist China” or “Red China” said with an appropriate sneer. She said that getting into China was easier than traveling the United States. When a communist dictatorship makes traveling easier than does the United States government you know that something has gone terribly wrong.

The bipartisan war on liberty.

So, some people think there will be major changes when the Democrats take power. Some people are fools. Lets take the legislation to EXPAND the powers of the Bush administration to conduct wiretaps -- as if those powers are not too overly broad already. The International Herald Tribune reports:

A furious push by the White House to broaden its wiretapping authority appeared on the verge of victory Saturday as a bill advanced in Congress to give the Bush administration more latitude temporarily to eavesdrop without court warrants on foreign communications that it suspects may be tied to terrorism. The Senate passed the measure Friday night and sent it to the House for its consideration, where Democratic leaders acknowledged that it would probably pass.

Remember the Democrats control the Senate and they control the House. These measures couldn’t pass with out Democratic support. Caroline Frederickson, of the ACLU, said: “The Democrats caved in to the politics of fear we’re seeing from this administration. They didn’t want to be depicted as soft on terrorism. But this measure removes any court oversight from surveillance on Americans in a large number of cases.”

The White House knows that Congressvermin want to go home for their August break and figure they can push through new legislation at the last minute that otherwise might get some resistance. Don’t think President Cheney and Vice President Bush (not a typo) are particularly devious. Bill Clinton did the same thing. As CNN reported around this time of the year in 1996: “President Clinton urged Congress Tuesday to act swiftly in developing anti-terrorism legislation before its August recess.”

It’s an old trick by politicians to expand their power. Clinton said it was urgent and Bush said “time is short”. Keep the congressvermin in session and watch them pass what you want so they can go on vacation. OOPS, I mean go on “fact finding missions”.

Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid pontificated that “My Republican colleagues chose to rubber-stamp a flawed administration proposal.” Harry! That couldn’t pass the Senate where you are the majority leader without the support of Democrats.

Democratic control of the houses of Congresses don’t appear to be much of a hindrance to the Imperial Presidency. But then why should it? The Democrats figure they will be picking the next Emperor. And then all those lovely little powers will be theirs to use.

The seesaw between Democrats and Republicans is a seesaw between competing tyrannies. The Democrats are not big on religion and spiritual values and tend toward being more materialistic. That means they think the material world is important, far too important to let stupid voters control themselves. Wise, beneficent planners must act in the realm of economics and control man’s material existence.

The Republicans tend to value the spiritual and look with disdain on mere materialism. They are the “values” candidates. So they want wise, beneficent planners to control man’s thoughts and private morals.

In both cases they assume they are wise, beneficent leaders. And it both cases they are only willing to allow freedom in the realm they consider unimportant. Democrats aren’t big into values so what you think or how you live privately is not a major concern to them. But your material existence they will regulate from cradle to grave. Republicans aren’t big on the material world so the economic choices you make are not a major concern to them. But your private morals they will regulate from cradle to grave. “

Here is my prediction. When Bush is evicted from office, and hopefully straight into a courtroom in handcuffs, the Democrats will repeal little of the new powers that the Republicans gave the government. But there will be a flurry of activity pushing for more state control of the economy and social welfare policies. By the time the public is weary of the Democrats, which usually takes no more than one, or two terms at the most, the Republicans will be back.

At the end of the rule of the donkeys the elephants will storm in. They will repeal very little of the measures the Democrats passed in the previous years. Instead they will layer on new controls and regulations.

The reality is that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats act as a check on the power of the other. They compliment each other and in the process steal the heritage of America. They engage in a bipartisan war against liberty. A pox on both their houses.

Foreign Policy & Civil Liberties

This one hour lecture by author Jim Bovard can be watched at our sister site: TV Liberty. There are seven parts in total for about 60 minutes worth of material. All the parts can be found through this one link. Enjoy.

Arrested, imprisoned and dumped, innocent victims of the Bush terror war.

The complete immorality of the Bush Administration can be seen in how men, guilty of no crime, have spent years in the US concentration camp in Cuba, Guantanamo. It was easy to incarcerate them since the Bush Administration has declared that there are no rights in such camps and that the US security forces are free to act as they wish including torture.

That is the hallmark of a dictatorship and it is the reason I believe that the Bushites would act dictatorially in the United States as well if they felt they could they could get away with it. Certainly to the degree possible they have shown utter contempt for the Constitution and even Deputy Reichmarshall Cheney has told the graduating class of West Point that in their so-called “war on terror” they shouldn’t let something as inconsequential as the Constitution stand in their way.

Consider the plight of a couple of dozen Uighurs who were grabbed by the Pakistani dictatorship on orders of the Bush Administration. The Uighurs are an ethnic minority in communist China. They are mostly Muslims and the communist dictatorship has been oppressing this group for decades routinely executing anyone they believe to be separatists.

The Uighurs left Xinjiang Province in China looking for a way to earn a living for their families and to escape communist oppression. They heard that there was a small Uighur village in Afghanistan and went there. The US government, which never lies, claims the village was a training camp that was in some unspecified way connected to the Taliban.

Five of the men who have finally been released say that the only weapon they ever saw in the village was an old AK-47 rifle. There was vague talk about liberating the Uighurs from communist oppression but apparently there was no attempt to do much of anything else.

In 2001 the United States dropped bombs on the village sending the residents fleeing over the border into Pakistan. Here the Uighurs were arrested by the security police of the Pakistani dictatorship, which is allied with the United States --- yes, the US really is getting into bed with some odious “friends” under the Bush administration. And then the men were turned over to the Bush security police who whisked them off to the US concentration camp in Cuba -- a land free of such things as human rights which interfere with government power.

After four years of imprisonment, with no charges ever filed against them, five of the men were released. But to return to China means torture and possible execution. The US won’t return them to Afghanistan so instead they got the Albanians to accept them as refugees. False imprisonment is normally compensated in some way. But then the Bush Administration has never made a mistake -- just ask them. The idea of compensating people for false imprisonment implies they have rights and that is a concept that the Bushites insist does not apply to anyone that the US labels a terrorist.

Even when the US admits that the “terrorist” was never a “terrorist” he is still a “terrorist” when it comes to compensating him for the horrors that were unjustly inflicted on them. So the five men were sent to Albania with nothing and dumped there. They live in a dorm and are fed rice and noodles most of the time. They receive a small monthly stipend from the Albanian government. Otherwise they receive nothing for their false arrest and imprisonment. Now another 15 Uighurs are about to be released.

But Albania won’t take them. And neither will any other government. The Chinese dictatorship has warned other nations not to accept these people. They hope to have all these individuals sent to China to face more torture and imprisonment.

By 2003 the United States realized that these men were not a threat and not terrorists. China wanted them back. China promised they wouldn’t hurt the men. But the State Department knows of Chinese communist oppression of the Uighurs and said it was unwise to send the men there. So the first five were abandoned by the United States in Albania. And the rest remain imprisoned because other nations fear standing up to the Chinese dictatorship.

The US briefly considered sending the men to Gabon. The corrupt government of Omar Bongo saw this as an opportunity to fleece the United States again. In return it wanted massive loans from the US and Bongo met with his counterpart, in every sense of the word, George Bush, to see how much he could extract from the US. His extortion attempt failed.

With the Bush “war on terror” every dictatorship in the world has been supplied an excuse to act in any way they wish. The Chinese embassy in DC says the Uighurs “constitute part of international terrorist forces” and should face “justice” in China -- which would mean execution. This is contrary to their previous promise of not harming the men. So much for the value of their promises. Chinese officials have tried three times to force Albania to release the refugees to them for forced repatriation.

You would think the United States would be obligated to take the men. But apparently the Department of Homeland Security, which seems to be the executive branch of government these days, says the men are barred from entry to the US because they have been “linked” to terrorism. Yet they were released for not being linked to terrorism. And “linked” is a word that means nothing. It could range from “we falsely accused” to “they were involved beyond any shadow of a doubt”.

Meanwhile the men languish in Albania, hoping to find a home after the Bush Administration destroyed what life they had. The men fear returning to China but have no where else to go because the US has dumped them. US officials say they compensated the Albanian government to take the men. Why the men weren’t compensated is obvious -- that would be an admission of error. And the US has not talked to the men or tried to help them since dumping them. One US official in Albania told the New York Times that they don’t talk to the men or concern themselves about their living conditions since “they’re not our citizens”. True, but they ought to be our responsibility thanks to King George.

This injustice is monstrous. That the Bush Administration has dumped these men and refused to compensate them for the crimes the United States committed against them is an indication of the utter moral bankruptcy of King George and his minions. It just shows how little regard there is for the concept of individual rights by the US government today. One can't help but ask: when will George Bush be arrested for the crimes he has committed against others and against the US Constitution? Those Democrats wanting impeachment are cowards. What is needed is a treason trial.