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Don't Fly During Ramadan
An anonymous reader sends in a harrowing story from Aditya Mukerjee about his recent attempt to fly from New York to Los Angeles. After being pulled aside in the security line, he faced hours of interrogation by uncommunicative officials from several different agencies. When he was finally cleared, his airline, Jet Blue, wouldn't let him on the plane anyway. When he got home, he found evidence that it had been searched. He writes,
"It was 2:20PM by the time I was finally released from custody. My entire body was shaking uncontrollably, as if I were extremely cold, even though I wasn’t. I couldn’t identify the emotion I was feeling. Surprisingly, as far as I could tell, I was shaking out of neither fear nor anger - I felt neither of those emotions at the time. The shaking motion was entirely involuntary, and I couldn’t force my limbs to be still, no matter how hard I concentrated. In the end, JetBlue did refund my flight, but they cancelled my entire round-trip ticket. Because I had to rebook on another airline that same day, it ended up costing me about $700 more for the entire trip. .. But no matter how I’ve tried to rationalize this in the last week and a half, nothing can block out the memory of the chilling sensation I felt that first morning, lying on my air mattress, trying to forget the image of large, uniformed men invading the sanctuary of my home in my absence, wondering when they had done it, wondering why they had done it."
If somebody tested positive for explosives residue going through airport security I'd be suspicious too.
The problem here is the level of expertise of the people responding to this situation. It's like these people are DMV rejects. They do not have the training or even basic knowledge needed to deal with this situation AT ALL.
This reminded me of last year's massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, where the gunman thought he was attacking a mosque. Not that Muslims deserve to be targeted for hate crimes and unconstitutional detention any more than non-Muslims, but detaining a Hindu on suspicion of being a radical Muslim? It would be like detaining an Episcopalian on suspicion of being an IRA terrorist. After all, Whitey all looks the same...
Muslim extremists do act violently on their extreme views.
I've actually seen a group of Phelpsies. I've interacted with them. A friend of mine had a bogus police report filed against him by them.
You, on the other hand, have never met a Muslim extremist. In fact, although I don't know you from Adam's off ox, I feel confident that you don't actually know any Muslims personally at all -- or if you do, you're unaware of their religion because there was no reason for the subject to come up, particularly when talking with a guy like you. Would you want to talk to you about religion? I'm feeling dirty right now.
And BTW, anti-abortion bombers actually are, by definition, "blowing things up". In know, I know, no true Scotsman.
I am not a crackpot.
TL;DR: Old School McCarthyism
You don't know how right you are.
"Why do so many countries want to attack us?" the person asked.
The general replied that America stands in the way of them reaching their objective, which is to force everybody to comply with sharia law.
That general is Keith Alexander, head of the NSA
Yes, the head of the NSA is a fox news nutbag.
McCarthy is alive and well.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Why did this happen?
The guy's Indian, and to your average dimwitted, racist TSA goon that's just another variety of "terr'ist sand-nigger." They're not even smart enough to be racist properly.
This led to him getting an enhanced pat-down with an explosive swab test on his pants which came back positive for some unknown reason, and everything snowballed from there like some kind of comedy skit, where everything he did and said was interpreted as matching the profile of a terrorist.
Now this raises the question, is this how they treat anyone who they think is a Muslim? Explosive swab test and then run them through the wringer if it tests positive, complete with searching their home?
This is why I don't fly in clothes that I've handled gasoline or worked on cars in, you never know what might have been absorbed into the fibers.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You're so cute.
I get the feeling these so-called random searches are from an NSA-built profile. Someone with a similar name or nearby location made some references online, and this guy's getting gloveloved because some computer flagged him as a "possible".
I got flagged once as a "possible" back when I was in school. Some guy robbed a bank and escaped by bike. I happened to be wearing a blue vest, same ass the suspect.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
You mean a country that had a democratically elected leader until the US and UK organized a coup and then spent several years training secret police to murder and torture any secularists who didn't support the friendly puppet that they put in place? What do you have left when you have paid for all of the secularists to be killed? Let's be entirely honest about the history there. I admit that that country does have a grudge against us, but they have a really, REALLY good reason for it.
Depends on who you are and what you care about. Want to freely insult people? Germany's the wrong place. Want to have an abortion without being harassed? Germany is a good place. Want to harass, intimidate and lie to make people not have an abortion? Wrong place. Want to start a business and hire and fire people depending on your needs? Wrong place. Want to have children without being afraid of losing your job etc.? Slightly better place than the US but not comparable with e.g. Sweden. Want to have judges that care about justice and sanity, and a constitutional court with teeth that takes your freedoms seriously? Mostly a good place. Want courts that follow the letter of the law to the dot, no matter what was meant? Mostly wrong place. Want to have the freedom to own and use a gun? Really wrong place.
A lot of "freedoms" are one person's right to do one thing vs. one person's right to either do another thing or have a chance at a good life. Which counts more in which cases differs a lot between Germany and the US.
Either that or he thinks that the invasiveness of government is directly proportional to the tax rate. This is obviously false: If you have country A who taxes at 50%, and spends all that money on great roads and rail and health care and national parks and aid for the poor, that's less invasive than country B who taxes at 20% and spends all that money on police, surveillance of citizens, jails, propaganda, and the military.
I am officially gone from
Dear Uneducated Citizen:
Our Founding Fathers were okay with slavery. Who really cares what they envisioned with regard to what's okay and what's not okay?
Yours,
An Educated Citizen
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
I'm proud of my daughter who has the gumption to leave the US with no intention of returning. I'm proud of my sister and her kids who walked into the consulate in Alberta Canada and renounced their American Citizenship.
Reminds me of a confused Brit who was asked when he applied for US Citizenship 50 years ago, "Do you advocate the overthrow of the US government by force or violence?" He thought for a moment then answered, "Violence I suppose."
It's time for a second American Revolution.