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Booted From Airplane For Wearing Anti-TSA T-shirt
Cigarra writes "PhD student Arijit learned the hard way that in Brave New America you can't mock TSA's Security Theater and go on about your business. According to a recollection in RT.com: 'After being vigorously screened and questioned multiple times, Arijit says he was finally given permission, once more, to board his plane. The pilot of the aircraft, however, had had enough of the whole ordeal and asked the Delta supervisor to relay the message that, due to the discomfort the shirt had caused, neither Arijit nor his wife would be allowed to board the aircraft.' Just how much humiliation is the general American public willing to tolerate in the name of 'security'?"
Add in the racial bias in profiling and the racist prejudices of some passengers (this can get you booted too if a passenger decides s/he is "uncomfortable" on the plane with you on it) and you have quite an ugly situation.
what kind of dipshit is afraid of a t-shirt? obviously this guy is being pushed around because of his name and genetic background. i smell LAWSUIT.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Hi folks,
Just as a brief FYI, we're REALLY starting to worry about you Yanks.
Please get your house in order, before things get truly out of control.
If you wait much longer (and we may be talking seconds here), the choice will be gone.
With compassion,
the Rest of the World
Looks like the KKK renamed their acronym to something more paletable.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Freedom to wear the shirt, not free from the consequences of wearing the shirt.
>> Just how much humiliation is the general American public willing to tolerate in the name of 'security'?"
Quite a lot apparently, quite a lot.
"Life is not magic." Dr. Ron Weiss - "If we don't play God, who will?" Dr. James Watson
America is the only country that gropes It's passengers. Israel profiles, & has no hijackings.
I see no reason to submit to their bullshit. I have not flown in nearly 7 years, and don't see it happening any time soon.
If enough people simply refuse to fly, the airlines will go belly up, or they will lobby to remove the TSA. Though, the private thugs they replace them with probably won't be any better.
While some people grumble and complain about the process, I've also encountered many people who believe what the TSA is doing is actually protecting them from terrorism.
More to the point, they honestly believe that there are terrorists right around the corner just waiting to blow them up. Not in an abstract but THEM, specifically. You know, it could happen anywhere so it could happen to YOU and it could happen HERE!
Their lives are so boring and mundane they get a thrill over the possibility that something important could happen to them or someone they know. Even if it is something like a terrorist attack, it makes them feel special. As if the town of Bumfuck, Nowhere was chosen special for a target.
It gives them something to gossip about. "What if..." It is essentially one of the same motivations that drives people to buy lottery tickets. They can dream "what if..." and not have to face the dull reality that is their life.
It's really sad.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I'm going to say that most people 45+ don't know what ZOMG means. Therefore, seeing something that says "Gonna Kill US All ZOMG" would be a bit unnerving. Even though it is security theater, society has norms that state when people deem to be right and wrong. Wearing a shirt that has that message is wrong because it breaks those societal courtesies. Putting someone's grandma in a state of unease for something that is already not exactly the most fun doesn't sit well in my book.
I applaud the pilot. It is his job to get the plane safely in the air and back to the ground. He probably saw it for what it was, but decided he didn't want one the passengers beating the shit out of this guy mid-air because they felt threatened. Bruce Schneier has pointed out numerous times that the acts against the World Trade Center have empowered the average citizen to stand up and fight if they closely felt threatened. That could have been the case and may have saved the student further grief.
Crap! I just kissed my karma good-bye.
America is the only country that gropes It's passengers. Israel profiles, & has no hijackings.
Profiling by ethnicity doesn't work; for one thing, it's vulnerable to proxy bomb attacks. I've posted links on this many times before; search for the "Carnival Booth" paper from MIT. I recommend Schneier's site or DuckDuckGo.
El Al's security apparatus (behavioral profiling, interviews, luggage depressurization, and tarmac security, off the top of my head) have been said to be infeasible due to scalability in a country of over 300 million. However, I haven't seen an data to back up this claim, nor have I done the math.
I'm not saying I support the current system; I find it deplorable and refuse to fly, going on six years. I'd like to see a return to sane, pre-2001-09 security procedures. At least, that's what it'd take to get me to voluntarily set foot on a commercial airliner again.
Thank you, Edward Snowden.
"Arguments from authority are worthless." —Carl Sagan
El Al's security apparatus (behavioral profiling, interviews, luggage depressurization, and tarmac security, off the top of my head) have been said to be infeasible due to scalability in a country of over 300 million. However, I haven't seen an data to back up this claim, nor have I done the math.
Oh, the math is easy.
Doing it THAT way would require them to actually train (as opposed to simply recognizing the threat color scheme) and pay skilled-worker wages, as opposed to giving a badge to -- well, to what we have now (See? I was nice)
...but he had the balls to risk some heat to exercise his rights and bring attention to the stupidity of the TSA.
It was not the TSA that were being stupid here - they passed him through all the security checks the first time without any particular issue. The problem here lies in the general reaction of US society. Yes the guy was being an idiot and living in the US should have known the likely outcome but why is it that nobody could recognise him for the idiot that he was and treat the situation appropriately? Blowing it out of all proportion like this only makes the authorities appear like idiots themselves and encourages more of this stupid behaviour because of all the attention their response gets. You would have thought that with a lesson like the Salem witch trials 300+ years ago US society would have learnt the lesson by now.
Isreal actually trains thier security to look for suspicious behavior instead of assuming everyone is a suspect. Profiling doesn't neccessarily mean "assume all blacks/arabs/hispanics/whater are guilty." I can also mean "the suspicious looking guy might be guilty so lets go talk to him." You will also notice that countries that are actually afraid of terrorist bombings don't have long lines outside security checkpoints because terrorists like to bomb the checkpoints. If you care about security you get everyone through the check point as quickly as possible. We just like harrassing innocent citizens.
Nobody said it gave them the right, and this guy's right to bitch about it hasn't been denied. The point is that there are consequences, right or wrong, to going out of your way to be a jackass.
Why do you want me to prove something I didn't claim? Why didn't you demand proof from the person who actually _did_ claim something?
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You do have the freedom to express yourself.
Delta pilots also have the freedom to kick you off their planes if you do so in a disruptive way.
If you're expressing concern over the content of someone's t-shirt, you are the one who should be removed. No exceptions. That kind of behavior should never be tolerated.
Let me restate for emphasis: If you are panicking over the content of someone's t-shirt, you are far more dangerous than the t-shirt wearer.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
So are Eric and Dylan, Timothy, Ted, Jeff, and John. Should we bar everyone with those first names from flying?
sounds like the pilot was being vindictive and trying to push his political views...no fair and bad service.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
I'm not saying I support the current system; I find it deplorable and refuse to fly, going on six years.
Before the current policies (groping, irradiating, etc) began: What has been the rate of *successful* terrorist attacks over the previous 10 years? (I'm asking about actually successful attempts. I'm not talking about idiots who almost won a honorary darwin awards by setting their pant on fire, or got zerg-rushed by the rest of the passengers. Or the crazie raving lunatics who got encouraged by a cover agent who had to provide them the whole (fake) material and an actual plan, just so they would act out something [stupid] and get caught because otherwise they would have kept mumbling things and drooling alone)
How does their annual death toll compare against victims of car accidents and victims of cardio-vascular diseases ? (To take the 2 leading causes of death in the developed world). Or even compared to victims struck by lightning (to take another example of dramatic and rare cause of death) ?
My opinion is that such common sense analysis will prove that we aren't gaining much by all this theater appart from inconvenience, and that (no matter how much tragic and traumatic it has been for the victims of 9/11 and their families) the impact of terrorism is a very small and insignificant occasional bump in the statistics.
It's as useful as the simpson's tiger repellant rock.
We would gain much more by a "War on cars!!!!" and "War on burgers!!!!" than a "War on ter'rists!!!" But we still have to wait longer for those.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That's odd. In the America I grew up, on a military base surrounded by F-4 Phantom jets and armed men ridiculously overqualified to kill you, on the school on that base I was taught to QUESTION AUTHORITY, to HOLD AUTHORITY ACCOUNTABLE, that my father and his colleagues practiced the bloody art of mayehm to KEEP US FREE, not to kowtow to those in authority.
I was taught that we routinely hold elections so we could hold elected officials, referred to as PUBLIC SERVANTS, accountable for their actions. I grew up among armed men in uniform who took me to national monuments and proudly declaimed that We the People were the source of authority, that men in uniform always, always, ALWAYS deferred to a civilian commander in chief.
Reading your post sounds odd to someone raised by the sound of Phantom and Tomcat jets. Respecting authority for authority's sake was something we said the Commies and the Nazis did. :-) Americans were born free and bowed to no one. Give me Liberty or Give Me Death. Don't Tread on Me.
Of course, I'm sorry. Reading your post, I assume you must come from some tragic country like Burma or North Korea where you have to bow and scrape just to get by. Please send our warmest regards and deepest repect to Aung San Suu Kyi, who knows more about what it means to be an American than you ever will.
Hey, wait a minute. Cartman? Eric Cartman?! Is that you Cartman?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Wearing a t-shirt that says bite me to a dog convention, is pretty damned crazy.
Only if the dogs can read. Unfortunately for us, Delta personnel can apparently read, and not only read, but can read things which are irrelevant to the safety and operation of the airplane.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
If you are in the military and a general comes, you salute him even if you hate his guts, and you don't give him the middle finger.
Nope. You absolutely don't salute Him. Unless he has personally done something that has earned your respect, you're never saluting him.
You're saluting the uniform. You always, always, always salute the office, not the man. The office, again, is a function of the People of the United States, and a symbol of our highest ideals. That uniform is a walking implementation of the idea that "All men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights..." That's why it's worthy of a salute, because it carries an Idea, not just Power. That's why the Oath you swear when you pick up a gun is always to the Constitution, never a man.
If all that uniform carries is Power, if the only thing a uniform has to offer is Force, then "it is [your] right, it is [your] duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for [your] future security."
It chills me to my bones to hear an American claim that a government official should be respected simply because he has brute force behind him. Whatever happened to "the Spirit of '76?"
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
If you have a moral objection to an order, you are obligated to make your concerns known. However, making your concerns known does not have to happen immediately.
Were you asleep that day? Does "Nuremburg" ring a bell? How about "My Lai?" If you have a moral objection to an order, you PUT YOUR DAMNED WEAPON DOWN! Your official scripted response is "I'm sorry, sir, but that is an unlawful order and I cannot follow it." The military makes it crystal clear that not only do you have a duty to refuse an unlawful order, but you will be prosecuted and punished if you follow that order and commit a crime. You absolutely do not "wait until later." You refuse that order right then, right there, or pay the price later for following it.
Seriously, you can't tell the difference between saluting the office and saluting the man? It does have a touch of subtlety, I grant you. Were you an Aggie by any chance? :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."