:: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 ::
The TSA’s “Protection” Racket
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Posted by Edward Cline at 9:16 AM
There is a scene in Schindler’s List in which all the inmates of the concentration camp are forced to strip naked en masse and run through a gauntlet of outdoor medical checks. If the inmates weren’t already “conditioned” to incarceration, humiliation, being kidnapped, robbed, tagged, folded, spindled, shredded, and “processed,” that exercise guaranteed it. Those who didn’t pass the “test,” were pulled from the line and never heard from again. Not that it mattered in the long run: they were all scheduled for extermination.
Too eerily a parallel with the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA's) new “enhanced” security policies at American airports, which include full-body scans that show every detail of one’s person beneath clothing and/or intimate “pat-downs” by manqués wearing blue surgeon’s gloves, who are authorized to probe and grope infants, school children, adults, nuns, businessmen, well, everyone for combustibles or explosive materials. Passengers are allowed to “opt out” for the pat-down, should they object to being seen naked, or if they’re susceptible to involuntary radiation treatments.
Some choice. No pressure at all, your choice – unless you choose to stop flying the unfriendly skies. And if you object to either invasive scrutiny, you will be pulled from the line and browbeaten by the Cro-Magnons of the TSA. “It’s your patriotic duty.” “It’s for your own safety.” “It’s the law.” “If you resist, we’ll fine you bundles of money and put you on our watch list and have you investigated.” “Resistance is futile.” “You want to be arrested? We know how to waste your time.”
Perhaps that is unfair to the Cro-Magnons. They at least left us some magnificent cave paintings, more than Janet Napolitano, Michael Chertoff, President Barack Obama, and the minions and munchkins of the TSA are ever likely to leave the country.
I will not inveigh about how the whole idea of screening passengers violates the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures (and the TSA’s personnel, besides being legalized molesters, are also kleptomaniacs; what happens to all the things they confiscate?). This has already been thoroughly discussed by others. I will not point out how great a failure the TSA is in preventing terrorist hijackings and bombings; handfuls of passengers have a greater track record in foiling them than the 250,000 employees of the TSA. I will not reiterate that, if airport security is necessary, then the simplest solution would be to profile Muslims of any gender or age; after all, it is Muslim terrorists, acting in the name of their faith, that the TSA is purportedly hoping to catch in the act. Islamists have used women and children as suicide bombers.
But, to governments with a penchant for the police state, the simplest solution is not an option. The TSA has “opted out” of it. We can’t profile Muslims. That would be “discriminatory.” Not respectful. Insensitive. A violation of their persons, forbidden by the Koran.
Both former President George W. Bush and the current occupant of the White House believe in “outreach,” which means taking under advisement from the likes of the Council on American-Islamic Relations the necessity to exempt Muslims, especially Muslim women, from the kind of thorough concentration camp routine all others must endure. That “outreach” means that an infidel may not feel a Muslim woman’s breasts and groin, run his or her hands over her buttocks, legs, and back, or rummage through her hair.
Napolitano and Company know what they’re doing. Aside from giving carte blanche to the perverts and pedophiles in the TSA a dream job of feeling up attractive women (or men) and children and availing themselves to an endless stream of wacko porn in a dark room (and we have only the government’s word that these images are not stored or able to be added to some employee’s catalogue of porn), the TSA from the beginning has played the role of extortionist and hostage-taker: You want to see your relatives, seal a business deal, get to school, take your kids to Disneyland? You can’t, unless you surrender your liberty, your dignity, and your money.
That is an option the TSA knows you can’t refuse. The Mafia had a term for this kind of abuse: a protection racket.
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