RSN Fundraising Banner
FB Share
Email This Page
add comment

writing for godot

RUBBER GLOVES AND VASELINE

Print
Written by James and Jean Anton   
Wednesday, 01 December 2010 08:18
It could happen.
An airport security agent gets a pair of rubber gloves and Vaseline and tells you to bend over.
You had decided that you did not - for whatever reason - wish to pass through the strip-search scanner. For this “offense” you are taken to a back room for an enhanced pat-down. The “punishment” is designed to coerce you into “opting” to be strip scanned.

While Vaseline and rubber gloves are not standard operating procedures yet, the rest of the above is. Seventy airports now use strip scanners or enhanced pat-downs regardless of age, gender, or physical condition. By 2014 it will soon become standard operating procedure at another 1800 airports.

But hang on to your undies because the rubber gloves and Vaseline bit could become standard operating procedure soon. It seems these high-tech $150,000-plus scanners cannot detect a plastic tube full of explosives in a terrorist’s rectum, as shown in Saudi Arabia where an al-Qaeda operative with an anal body bomb passed through a strip-search scanner in an assassination attempt in September 2010.

Homeland security, aware of this problem, is choosing to ignore this hole (no pun intended) in their security procedures for now. But had the Christmas underwear bomber, Umar Abdul Mutallab, been caught with an explosives-filled tube in his anus instead of in his underwear, the rubber glove treatment would probably be standard operating procedure today.

Homeland security says that these new procedures will deter terrorists, but of course they won’t. They are choosing to ignore the fact that even if we put these scanners in all of our 14,000 airports, a terrorist could take a direct flight to the U.S. from a country that hasn’t purchased one of our full-body scanners or enhanced pat-downs, thereby avoiding detection.
As of this writing, few other countries seem to think the whole-body x-ray machines (not to mention enhanced pat-downs) are a good idea.

What if a terrorist, already in the US, decided to blow himself up on a train, a bus, or on the subway? Should these other commuters also be strip scanned? Not yet. Homeland Security may be concerned about the commuter havoc that would be wrought by the daily scanning and/or enhanced pat-downs in very busy train or bus stations.
They’re hoping that would-be terrorists will do us the courtesy of sticking exclusively to blowing up airplanes.

Let’s for a minute ignore all the other issues of the strip-scan-pat-down SOP: Like the FBI’s storing these nude images of American citizens without permission in Clarksburg, West Virginia; like the violation of our 4th Amendment rights; like the fact that that the scanners don’t really protect us from terrorism, but are instead a physical and psychological assault on mainly law-abiding American citizens.
Rather, let’s ask ourselves why they are doing this.

Money talks. But it does not tell the whole story.
Michael Chertoff ordered some scanners while he was Bush’s secretary of Homeland Security. Chertoff happens to represent/get paid by Rapiscan (wouldn’t it be ironic if the “Rap” in Rapiscan were pronounced “rape”?), the company that sells airport strip-scanners.

He has since resigned and Janet Napolitano has taken his place as Secretary of Homeland Security. Since Chertoff used to be Secretary of Homeland Security, he knows important people like Napolitano and Obama. Any lobbyist worth his salt will tell you how important contacts are. Foisting big-ticket items on the agency you used to head is a piece of cake. There is a name for this kind of infamy. It’s called revolving-door corporation/politics.
When this kind of thing happens in other countries it’s called corruption.

Each machine costs upwards of $150,000. Rapiscan has already unloaded 150 of these full-body x-ray machines for 25 million taxpayer dollars. The machines were purchased under a no-bid contract using stimulus funds.

Why does Obama implement a program that is surely ineffective (Ironically Chertoff, who holds dual Israeli/American citizenship has even been criticized by security experts in Israel who say his whole-body X-ray machines are a waste of money) but also controversial, unpopular, and ultimately subjects fliers to unnecessary X-radiation, the effects of which accumulate?

When informed recently about the growing strong opposition to the objectionable procedures, Obama declared without emotion: the measures “are ... effective against the kind of threat that we saw in the Christmas Day bombing.”
Really?

Obama and his family can ignore all the fuss because he, his family, his Cabinet secretaries, as well as congressional leaders and a chosen, elite group of U.S. officials are exempt from whole-body scans and/or enhanced pat-downs whenever they fly on a commercial airliner.

So what’s the whole story?
We should accept the most awfully painful truth: That to speak of the legendary arrogance of the last administration is to over simplify. That the Obama administration and the ex-Bush administration have no regard and no respect for American citizens.

They think that they have rendered us so scared, so helpless, and so stupid with fake news and false statements that they can rob our money with one hand while they stick the other one up our asses.

by James and Jean Anton
www.endendlesswars.org
e-max.it: your social media marketing partner
Email This Page

 

THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community.

RSNRSN