TSA Truth Or Rumor?
Henry Blodget tweeted this, based on the experience, hours ago, of an international traveler:
@hblodget New Plane Security Rules: No Electronics, No Getting Up Last Hour, 1 Bag http://bit.ly/5JHony
I left a copy of Blodget's tweet, along with this comment on the TSA's blog (on some cutesy-wootsy happy holidays posting):
Is this true? So...electronics are stolen from bags, but we're going to have to put our phones and laptops in our luggage? And spend hours and hours in the airport (thanks to TSA regulations) and then get on a plane for hours and hours and not be able to do any work?Well, actually, the truth is, we can thank "the religion of peace."
An excerpt from the TSA's blog post, which practically made me physically ill, especially in light of my boyfriend's Delta/Northwest flight into Detroit Metro just hours before:
T'was the night before travel and all through the suitcase, Not an item was stirring not even the toothpaste.The stockings were packed in the bag with great care,
With hopes that they soon would be in the air.
...And fervent wishes that they would not be blown up by Muslim barbarians before they land.
UPDATE - Blodget tweeted:
@hblodget Those new flight restrictions appear to be only on international flights into US, thank goodness http://bit.ly/64W3un (but still...)
TSA = department of making rules entirely disconnected from actually improving security. Heading to the airport now; 2+ hours before our flight. Online check-in was disabled.
One moron burns his crotch and everybody wets their pants. Fucking fuck. Americans need to get a grip.
Whatever at December 26, 2009 9:29 AM
On the other hand.....
http://www.breitbart.tv/online-video-shows-how-to-make-modern-binary-explosive-similar-to-flight-293-device/
Eric at December 26, 2009 9:35 AM
How long before we simply stop allowing muslims on planes? It's the simplest solution and also the most likely to get the ones who aren't into jihad to take out their self-detonating co-religionists.
brian at December 26, 2009 9:43 AM
"How long before we simply stop allowing muslims on planes?"
Please do me a favor. Never run for public office. Never attempt to get into a position where you are ever in charge of anyone else's life and well-being, with the possible exception of those you sired.
Read this, and try and fathom why your idea is...in the spirit of the holiday, I'll stop at "Not a good idea".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment
Vinnie Bartilucci at December 26, 2009 10:15 AM
Vinne rounding people up based on ethnicity for no reason and allowing a business to refuse service to a group of people are completely different.
Noone is suggesting rounding up muslims and putting them in camps - yet
lujlp at December 26, 2009 11:36 AM
It continues to amaze me that El Al doesn't have this problem.
For a variety of reasons.
Radwaste at December 26, 2009 2:02 PM
Of course, the Nisei didn't blow up buildings and kill thousands. The Muslims did and would like to kill still more of us. Or does that make no difference, Vinnie?
kishke at December 26, 2009 7:14 PM
And here is what these Johnny-on-the-Spots failed to detect in my hand luggage on my trip four days ago.
1. A 8 oz bottle of foundation
2. A rather wicked looking awl
3. Three joints worth of pot
Lesson learned for me - get more than half an hour's sleep the night before I pack. It's gonna suck to throw out that pot before my return trip. Thank god the masters of hindsight and reactive policies are here to safeguard us.
Elle at December 26, 2009 8:26 PM
Vinnie -
Get a clue and/or pull your head out of your ass.
The Japanese rounded up on the West Coast were rounded up out of pure racism. They were not likely to be a threat to anyone. After all, we didn't round up Germans.
However, the Japanese and Germans in the US weren't engaging in plots to destroy the US.
This is not true of muslims.
Of course, lujlp points out the obvious - I'm not calling for rounding them up or depriving them of their rights. They can take a bus, they can drive. But if you're a practicing muslim, no planes for you.
brian at December 26, 2009 9:04 PM
"The Japanese rounded up on the West Coast were rounded up out of pure racism. They were not likely to be a threat to anyone. After all, we didn't round up Germans.
However, the Japanese and Germans in the US weren't engaging in plots to destroy the US."
The Japanese rounded up on the west coast and put into camps were primarily of two types, those who were still Japanese citizens and those who would not swear a loyalty oath to the United States. Japanese, in other parts of the country were not interned. Code breakers knew during World War II that the naval bases and ship yards on the west coast was vulnerable to sabotage and in fact there was intelligence and radio traffic indicating that there were Japanese agents on the West Coast. Japanese in Hawaii were not interned because all the damage that could be done had already been done there in the Pearl Harbor attack. FYI many German nationals were also interned in the US, and some Italians too, just like all citizens of allied nations were interned in Japan and other occupied countries for the duration of the war (and treated very poorly with a high death rate) I might add. For further reading, I can probably find the link to the Japanese newspapers that were published in the Camps. Most were filled with such sentiments as “death to the imperialist yankee pigs”, and how honorable it would be to serve the Emperor when Japan kicked our ass. It amazes me how history has been rewritten by late 20th century lawyers (looking for a portion of reparations) to totally wipe out the actual reasons that some (but by no means all) Japanese citizens on the West Coast were put into Camps. These same people have also attempted to rewrite the entire history of WW II to try and make Japan look like the victim which after the rape of Nanking and other similar atrocities against the Koreans and the Chinese, is no mean feat. Isabel
Isabel1130 at December 26, 2009 9:51 PM
I got a badass box cutter through security last weekend. I wasn't even trying to hide the box cutter. It should have shown up in X-rays, and anyone who peeked into my bag would have seen it. Last year, they confiscated my Japanese Cherry Blossom hand cream. Good to know where their priorities are.
MonicaP at December 26, 2009 9:57 PM
Vinnie,
I will second your call for rational thinking and fairness. Our country was founded on freedom of religion and freedom from persecution. I hate this mess, but we are smarter than to resort to the easy out.
On second thought, perhaps we should just be realistic and profile terrorists to protect ourselves. We should not allow men on planes. Most hijackers, rapists, terrorists, warmongers, and mass murderers have been men.
Jen at December 26, 2009 9:57 PM
On the subject of the new security regulations, I don't think the requirement is going to be to put your electronics in your checked baggage, merely that you will not have it on your lap during the last hour of the flight if it is an international flight. I am a bit sorry that I bought a ticket to Rome a week ago as I have really have hated flying for the last 8 years. The ticket was about 750 dollars and of that amount a full 355 bucks was taxes, fees and surcharges. I have no idea how the airlines make a living these days. Isabel
Isabel1130 at December 26, 2009 10:25 PM
Elle --
Don't throw the pot out. Mail it back to yourself. You should be able to use USPS priority mail with no problem at all, since it's well under 13 oz.
cpabroker at December 26, 2009 10:30 PM
On second thought, perhaps we should just be realistic and profile terrorists to protect ourselves. We should not allow men on planes. Most hijackers, rapists, terrorists, warmongers, and mass murderers have been men. -Jen
Really Jen? You want to go there? You do realize the 99% of what any man does is in order to get a woman right? At least the straight ones.
And where the hell did you learn american history?
Who exactly was it that told you the revolutionary war was about religion?
I'll let you in on a secret, it was about money and power and feuled by ethnocentrism and the british superiority complex.
Ever hear of the Quakers? Native Americans? Mormans? None of them seemed to be much free of persecution from the primarily protestant population of the colonies or the USA.
Thank you for playing please try again.
lujlp at December 26, 2009 11:00 PM
Or to protect ourselves from this stupidity we could not let you have a computer.
I suspect if we had simply carpet-nuked the middle east on 9/12/01 we wouldn't need to have this conversation.
brian at December 27, 2009 8:02 AM
Amy Alkon
http://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/12/26/tsa_truth_or_ru.html#comment-1684847">comment from brianI was not for going into Iraq, a country where a really bad guy kept the warring barbarians from killing each other (he had cornered the market on that). I was for flattening the mountains of Afghanistan to go after the people actually responsible for 9/11 and actually a danger to our lives and western freedoms.
Amy Alkon at December 27, 2009 8:19 AM
Amy, agreed on Afghanistan. But it's not too late for that. No reason the flattening can't happen right now.
kishke at December 27, 2009 9:37 AM
Except that it wasn't and isn't enough.
We have three options regarding islam - as I have been saying for years:
Reformation, isolation, annihilation.
The invasion of Iraq was supposed to bring about the first. The second is a logistical nightmare. The third is genocide.
And if something like this asshole accidentally lighting his schwanz on fire ever gets pulled off successfully, you'll see a lot more people supporting, even demanding that third option.
brian at December 27, 2009 10:13 AM
Reformation, isolation, annihilation.
The invasion of Iraq was supposed to bring about the first. The second is a logistical nightmare.
Sure, but we should at least be doing whatever we can on that front. I was certain after 9-11 that the US would soon be deporting all and any non-citizen Muslims. Instead, we're still importing Saudis to colleges accross the country.
kishke at December 27, 2009 11:53 AM
The treatment of Japanese immigrants in the 20s, 30s, and 40s is hardly comparable to the treatment of Muslims over the past 30 years.
The 1924 Immigration Act set quotas for citizenship, effectively denying citizenship to many legal immigrants from the Orient (especially Japan). So, when war came, many Japanese immigrants who had been blocked from obtaining US citizenship were interred because they were not US citizens.
90% of Japanese immigrants settled in California, leading to strong anti-Japanese sentiment.
After Pearl Harbor, the US government set up military exclusion zones from which Japanese citizens [see my earlier comment] were excluded. These military zones included California, Oregon, and parts of Washington state.
Japanese immigrants in other parts of the country were so small in number as to be negligible and did not generate the level of racism and hatred that their higher numbers did in California and Oregon.
Even before the war, California's racism toward its Japanese-origin residents had led to anti-miscegenation laws, registration laws, and even segregated schools in San Francisco.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor the California legislature issued a manifesto to California newspapers which argued ethnic Japanese were unassimilable and argued that non-citizen Japanese residents were loyal subjects of the Emperor. Earl Warren, California Attorney General, argued that the Japanese residents should be removed from California. Small numbers of German and Italian citizens were also interred
Loyalty oaths were not issued until after internment. Many second generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) who signed the loyalty oath were later recruited into the 442nd RCT / 100th Infantry, one of the most decorated units in US Army history, in which they served with valor in the Italian campaign.
Conan the Grammarian at December 27, 2009 11:53 AM
The treatment of Japanese immigrants in the 20s, 30s, and 40s is hardly comparable to the treatment of Muslims over the past 30 years.
The 1924 Immigration Act set quotas for citizenship, effectively denying citizenship to many legal immigrants from the Orient (especially Japan). So, when war came, many Japanese immigrants who had been blocked from obtaining US citizenship were interred because they were not US citizens.
90% of Japanese immigrants settled in California, leading to strong anti-Japanese sentiment.
After Pearl Harbor, the US government set up military exclusion zones from which Japanese citizens [see my earlier comment] were excluded. These military zones included California, Oregon, and parts of Washington state.
Japanese immigrants in other parts of the country were so small in number as to be negligible and did not generate the level of racism and hatred that their higher numbers did in California and Oregon.
Even before the war, California's racism toward its Japanese-origin residents had led to anti-miscegenation laws, registration laws, and even segregated schools in San Francisco.
Shortly after Pearl Harbor the California legislature issued a manifesto to California newspapers which argued ethnic Japanese were unassimilable and argued that non-citizen Japanese residents were loyal subjects of the Emperor. Earl Warren, California Attorney General, argued that the Japanese residents should be removed from California. Small numbers of German and Italian citizens were also interred
Loyalty oaths were not issued until after internment. Many second generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) who signed the loyalty oath were later recruited into the 442nd RCT / 100th Infantry, one of the most decorated units in US Army history, in which they served with valor in the Italian campaign.
Conan the Grammarian at December 27, 2009 11:53 AM
Sorry for the double-post. Thumb spasm.
Conan the Grammarian at December 27, 2009 12:09 PM
The second one was different somehow.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at December 27, 2009 12:18 PM
Made you look.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at December 27, 2009 12:19 PM
Crid, you're really "on" today. You're cracking me up with your wit. You must be a lawyer.
Rojak at December 27, 2009 1:49 PM
"The 1924 Immigration Act set quotas for citizenship, effectively denying citizenship to many legal immigrants from the Orient (especially Japan). So, when war came, many Japanese immigrants who had been blocked from obtaining US citizenship were interred because they were not US citizens."
Yes, and in 1924 it was impossible and even now it is nearly impossible for a non Japanese to be granted citizenship in Japan. I see nothing wrong with treating their immigrants the way they treat and treated ours. In my opinion, immigration laws should not be unilateral. They should be agreed upon and reciprocal with the country immigrants arrived from. Like I said, the newspapers published in the camps indicate that the right foreign nationals were interred. This was also the case in Canada which had it's own internment program. However no one has an interest in portraying Canada as the "evil empire" that the US is. The internment camps in the US bore no resemblance to those in which US citizens were held in the Orient. Many Japanese were also offered the option of repatriation to Japan and some took the US up on it. Others joined the US armed forces and served in the European theatre. Our citizens and others of European ancestry were not offered any of those options by the Japanese. For further reading on the abysmal treatment of US POW's and civilians. http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/usprisoners_japancomp.htm#world
Isabel
Isabel1130 at December 27, 2009 1:58 PM
I was hoping that people would recognize the sarcasm in the suggestion that men be banned from airplanes. Of course, I think that is as ridiculous as banning people for reasons other than their actions.
I have always understood that our country was founded in a large part by people who wanted to escape the oppression of the Church of England. Of course, our country's founders committed their own atrocities.
"Early immigrants to the American colonies were motivated largely by the desire to worship freely in their own fashion, particularly after the English Civil War, but also religious wars and disputes in France and Germany." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_religion_in_the_United_States
PS Amy I agree with you about leaving Iraq alone and decimating Afghanistan. Too bad we can't put the genie back in that bottle.
Jen at December 27, 2009 7:01 PM
Of course, our country's founders committed their own atrocities.
So Washington, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson et al. committed "atrocities?" Care to name a few?
kishke at December 27, 2009 7:27 PM
Many of the atrocities happened before our founding fathers, but I can find some instances of "bad behavior". I understand that our founding fathers had to deal with reality and the culture of the time. However they did not live up to their own ideals of all men being created equal.
Two expeditions sent by George Washington against the tribes are complete disasters. The second, in 1791, is led by a personal friend of Washington, Arthur St Clair. His 1400 men are surprised by the Indians at dawn in their camp beside the Maumee river. Three hours later more than 600 are dead and nearly 300 seriously wounded. Indian casualties are 21 killed and 40 wounded. It is one of the worst days in US military history.
The Americans have their revenge in 1794, once again in the region of the Maumee, when an army commanded by Anthony Wayne defeats a force of Shawnees and other tribes at a woodland location which becomes known as Fallen Timbers.
From the early days of the American nation it is government policy that the Indian tribes should be subjected to a process of 'civilization'.
In 1830 congress passes President Jackson's Indian Removal Act.
By 1838 the Cherokees have not moved. In that year federal troops are sent to Georgia to enforce the removal of the Indians. The Cherokees are rounded up into camps and are then dispatched under guard on a long march to the west.
Of 18,000 Cherokees displaced from their traditional lands in this way, it is calculated that as many as 4000 fail to survive what becomes known as the Trail of Tears to the area now designated as Indian Territory.
In the slave trade and the Great Removal, the story of America contains two of the three main instances of large ethnic groups being forcibly resettled thousands of miles from home. (Stalin, in the USSR in the 1930s, provides the third.)
Read more: http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=1099&HistoryID=ab05>rack=pthc#ixzz0ax5aMxSj
In 1784, five years before he became president of the United States, George Washington, 52, was nearly toothless. So he hired a dentist to transplant nine teeth into his jaw--having extracted them from the mouths of his slaves.
And the statesmen's political lives depended on slavery. The three-fifths formula handed Jefferson his narrow victory in the presidential election of 1800 by inflating the votes of the southern states in the Electoral College. Once in office, Jefferson extended slavery with the Louisiana Purchase in 1803; the new land was carved into 13 states, including three slave states.
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/culture/articles/040112/12slave.htm
Of course, I am not a historian. Our nation is a great one, but it is an imperfect one.
Jen at December 27, 2009 8:06 PM
The persecution of Indians 60 years later was an atrocity perpetrated by the founding fathers? The extraction of teeth from Washington's slaves was an atrocity? What are you talking about?
kishke at December 27, 2009 10:19 PM
FWIW, it's my understanding that Washington only inquired about harvesting slaves' teeth... It didn't actually happen. Hence the famous wooden numbers.
Plenty damning enough. We should always be precise.
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at December 27, 2009 10:27 PM
I think that slavery was an atrocity that was perpetrated by our forefathers.
I think that taking land from the few Native Americans left after they were decimated by the purposeful infected of smallpox by the British are atrocities.
Perhaps if your teeth were forcibly extracted, you would think it was an atrocity. I put up the link so that you could read about it for yourself. I am not sure about the veracity of the story, but I think US News has a good reputation.
Jen at December 27, 2009 10:51 PM
The things you're saying are horrible to think about, but I don't think they're literally true.
> after they were decimated by the
> purposeful infected of smallpox
More than one recent book has said it wasn't the "purposeful" stuff, neither war nor poisoned blankets, that did the "decimation". Their natural lack of immunity to diseases which white explorers had collected from around the globe cleared the continent. Millions of grim deaths, certainly, but not the work of human will.
> Perhaps if your teeth were forcibly
> extracted, you would think it
> was an atrocity.
Right, but your source –a magazine mention in passing with no references– isn't bankable, unless all you want to do is cluck.
Nobody's asking you to say white guys were nice. But when someone is so eager to believe the worst....
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at December 28, 2009 4:09 AM
I am not sure about your sources Crid. I learned at college that the infection was purposeful. It was discovered accidentally, but then used against the Native Americans.
There will always be questions about history. Even today, newspapers report current events differently.
I guess if I need to, I can consult my father who lives out of state. I consider him the "uber authority" on history. He is studying History at the Master Level as a Donovan Scholar. He is in his 70's and always dreamed of being a history teacher. For years, Barnes and Noble's has set aside each new history book as it has come in. He reads each one and keeps it for reference. Books line his walls.
Jen at December 28, 2009 6:41 AM
The founding fathers had nothing to do with what was done to the Indians. Extracting the teeth, if it ever happened, which seems to be in doubt, is cruel, but is not an atrocity. An atrocity, in my mind, is something of much greater magnitude. Flying planes into buildings and killing thousands is an atrocity. Murdering six million people is an atrocity. Butchering people in Darfur is an atrocity. You are devaluing the word by using it so cavalierly. If pulling teeth is an atrocity, nothing is an atrocity. (Not to mention that the teeth were pulled - if they were pulled -from slaves, who were his property. As bad as we today agree that slavery was, it was not so viewed then. This is certainly a mitigating circumstance.)
As far as slavery is concerned, yes, it was terrible, but it was not the invention of our founding fathers. They did what everyone did at the time; here, in Great Britain, in Africa and elsewhere. It is (a) hyperbolic to accuse them of atrocities for holding slaves, and (b) pointless to do so, b/c if they were guilty of atrocities, then just about everyone else alive at that time was too.
kishke at December 28, 2009 7:38 AM
You are right kishka. I should have said our forefathers. It would be much more accurate. (although that does assume a background that is primarily Anglo - with some Native American thrown in in my case).
PS. Even if "everybody" does it, treating another human like an animal is wrong.
I also understand that it was the philosophy of the day, but really the idea of Manifest Destiny (popular in the 1800's) was an egocentric way of thinking that repeatedly and systematically destroyed other peoples.
Jen at December 28, 2009 8:02 AM
Even if "everybody" does it, treating another human like an animal is wrong.
Wrong, yes, at least by today's standards. An atrocity, not necessarily.
And there's a huge difference between accusing the founding fathers of atrocities, and saying that the US government has, at various times, acted wrongly and cruelly. The one is an attempt at delegitimization, the other a legitimate criticism. To succeed at the former, you'll need stronger stuff than you've produced so far.
kishke at December 28, 2009 8:21 AM
During Pontiac's rebellion (1763), Lord Jeffery Amherst, commander of British forces in North America, exchanged a series of letters with Colonel Henry Bouquet in which he broached the idea of sending smallpox-infected blankets to hostile tribes in the area.
It is not known whether the British put the plan into effect.
In the following Spring, smallpox was reported to be raging among the tribes in the vicinity. The actual source of the outbreak is not known (and probably never will be).
Conan the Grammarian at December 28, 2009 9:05 AM
Re: The natural (or non-willful) propagation of disease that wiped out the indigenous populations on this continent and the southern sister, see this.
(If I remember correctly.)
(Truth is, thoughtful analysis about this [both the biology and the politics] has been so plentiful lately that just about any recent source you turn to –any sources LONGER than a bitchslapping, smart-aleck remark in pissy a magazine article– will describe the sequences of events in good detail.)
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at December 29, 2009 12:17 AM
> Fucking fuck. Americans need to get a grip.
Note that Job One for this newcomer is to make social distance from the Unwashed Masses. Or as he calls them, "Americans."
Fucking fuck! Fucking fuck! The Little People are so na·ïve... It's all so beneath me!
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at December 29, 2009 12:20 AM
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