Is it news or satire? With the Travel Nazis Who Can Tell?

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Now the TSA gets off its ass

After the travel gestapo working for Homeland Security totally flubbed the warning they received about would-be terrorist Umar Abdullmutallab they have finally gotten off their fat asses and done something. Once again, it is the wrong thing.

As you will remember they imposed these new absurd travel regulations stripping people of the right to pee during the last hour of a flight. Well, that information was made public through some blogs. So what do the Travel Nazis do? They go after the blogs with subpoenas.

The writer Christopher Elliot, found a TSA agent at his front door with a subpoena saying: "You are hereby commanded by the administrator, Transportation Security Administration, United States Department of Homeland Security to produce and permit inspection of the records described below...."

While the TSA didn't have time to investigate someone reported by his own family as a terrorist, who flew without luggage and who appeared on a list of suspected terrorists, they do have time to harass bloggers. Why? The bloggers printed the new TSA "guidelines" on "How to Harass Innocent People Why Ignoring Real Threats." Okay, maybe the TSA called it SD 1544-09-06. They are demanding the bloggers reveal the source of their information. It is a pathetic commentary on the Homeland Security State of Napolitano and Obama, when instead of fixing what went wrong, they concentrate on unimportant issues while harassing bloggers.

The TSA sent two of their thugs to visit travel blogger Steve Frischling as well. They confiscated his lap top computer. Frischling said that they threatened to "interfer" with his contract to write a blog for an airline if he refused to cooperate with them. They wanted him to name names. Is Joe McCarthey running TSA? The New York Times is reporting that the TSA refuses to say how many American bloggers are being harassed under this new fishing expedition. What they want is to silence anyone exposing TSA stupidity—which would be a full time job.

So, all you morons who thought Obama would be different than Bush, you are right. He's worse. I could be wrong, but I don't remember TSA thugs harassing bloggers under Bush. That seems to be an Obama innovation. Certainly this contempt for the First Amendment is not unique it was used before—by men like Stalin, Mao, Mussolini and Hitler.

Huffington Post says:

The agents threatened to get Frischling -- a blogger for KLM airlines -- fired from his job, confiscate all his electronic devices -- phones, computers, and iPods -- and declare him a security risk -- which would get him on the No Fly list -- unless he cooperated.

Frischling -- who has worked for Life, Time, Newsweek, New York Times, and was embedded with troops in Iraq -- didn't know what to do. He couldn't reach a lawyer.

The civil subpoena threatened a fine and up to a year in jail for failure to comply.

The TSA has been under fire lately for failure to stop the Christmas Bomber from boarding the NW flight. Frischling told the Huffington Post that he didn't know who sent him the memo and that it is not in any of his computers. The memo was hardly secret. It was sent to approximately 10,000 airlines, airports, and security firms around the world, including locations in Riyadh, Islamabad, and Lagos.

So the TSA sends out a directive to thousands of places, which is seen by tens of thousands of people, and then starts harassing two people for knowing what is in the directive. This is par for the bungling, authoritarian perfomance of Napolitano. She really does want to be another Janet Reno. Now all she needs is to kill some women and children by buring down their "compound" and send in armed thugs to terrorize a small child. Janet Reno Lives. Be Afriad. Be Very Afraid.

Image: Janet Reno showing the world some of her "tools of persuasion." She promised to later show reporters the "rack," "iron maiden" and other tools she finds usesful as first security reichfürher.

Welcome to the world's largest prison.

The fear-mongering of Bush, combined with the hysterical cries of the "secure the border" crowd led to new restrictions. Of course, contrary to what the hysterics says, these restrictions actually restrict Americans not terrorists or would-be gardeners and day laborers.

The war on terror was a fraud from the start, it was always a war on Americans. Every measure that was passed was used, first and foremost, against Americans not against potential threats to the country. All the new spying on bank accounts isn't being used to crack down on drug cartels or international terrorists but on Americans who have funds overseas, where the greedy hands of politicians have a harder time grabbing them.

To "secure our borders" the government also imposed new rules on how Americans are allowed to travel. Of course, it wasn't Americans who flew the planes on 9/11 but Muslim terrorists, all of whom had official permission to enter the U.S. To protect you from the people they let in they restrict your movement.

Perhaps you don't think these new regulations and controls of Americans actually restricts movement. The data is in and it proves that it does. In 1972 Canada started keeping track of how many Americans visit that country. In the last five years the numbers have dropped in half. Canada's Globe and Mail reports:

Travel from the United States hit a peak in 2002, when about 43 million Americans crossed the border, but since then, it has eroded. One reason for the decline in recent years, said Randy Williams, president of the Tourism Industry Association of Canada, was the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative. Two years ago, passports became mandatory for cross-border air travel, and the original plan would have required passports for land crossings as of Jan. 1, 2008. While that was delayed, confusion over the need for travel documents kept some people home, Mr. Williams said. “Only about 30 per cent of Americans have a passport, so that limits the number we can attract into Canada,” he said.

Any economist will tell you that when you drive up the cost of something the demand goes down. Cost doesn't just mean how much money you pay. It also means how much hassle you have to go through to secure something, and what you have to give up in order to obtain it. Forcing Americans, who are visiting Canada for a shopping trip, to carry as passport meant that the number of visitors dropped. Passports aren't free, there is a great deal of hassle, more than ever actually, in order to get government permission to travel. That is what a passport is, it is government permission for you to travel. Something that was once consider a right of all free people is now considered a privilege which governments can dole out, and withhold, at will.

The world is a poorer place because of the morons in Homeland Security. They have trapped millions of Americans within the United States and they have discourage many millions more from visiting the U.S. Airlines are now avoiding connecting flights in the U.S. because the travel Gestapo mistreats and abuses visitors to our country. So, these measures are now keeping Americans from traveling abroad and keeping foreign visitors from coming here. Hundreds of millions of dollars of profits, both here and abroad, have been destroyed by this heavy-handed government intrusion. Government is the great wealth destroyer.

My recommendation: If you don't have a U.S. passport I urge you to get one. It will only become more and more difficult to get one. You are not a free person if you are not free to walk out of your own country. When you are restricted to a specific geographical area, by armed men, and only allowed to travel with special permission slips, you are a prisoner. It may be a very large prison but it is still a prison. Second, I also recommend that you try your best to send assets overseas, as a precaution. Be warned though, since the Bush regime was in power it has become very difficult for you to do this. Many overseas banks will no longer touch American clients due to the way our government threatens foreign banks that allow Americans to open accounts.

Of course, the American travel gestapo has been harassing everyone. Individuals who have connecting flights in the international section were forced to exit through customs and passport control merely so Big Brother could accumulate data on each person, even though who really aren't intending to visit the US. Individuals who only wanted to catch a flight from Canada to Mexico, with a brief US stopover, had to go through customs. If the U.S., for any reason, decided the person was unwelcome (and billions of people fit that category these days) they were not allowed to finish their flight to Mexico, but forced onto a plane to return to Canada.

The U.S. has mistreated foreign tourists so much that airlines are dropping the United States from their itinerary when possible. Air Canada had a flight to Sydney with a stopover in Hawaii. They dropped the stopover promising travelers their new route helps them "avoid the United States." Air New Zeland had a flight from Auckland to London, with a refueling stopover in Los Angeles. They dropped the US and moved the stopover to Vancouver, so that their customers wouldn't be harassed by the travel Nazis. Wikitravel warned:

You may wish to avoid transit in US airports because:

• Anyone arriving into the United States or one of its territories (like Puerto Rico) and not covered by the Visa Waiver Program requires at least a C-1 transit visa to transit the airport. This can be expensive (US$131 minimum) and time-consuming to obtain, and you can be denied the visa: the requirements are the same as the full B-2 tourist visa. If you arrive without this visa, even for a fuel stop or transit, and aren't eligible for a waiver, you will be sent home and recorded as having been denied entry to the US.
• The United States does not allow sterile transit, which means that even if you have an immediate connecting flight, you have to pass through Customs and Immigration. This is time-consuming and tedious (4 hours or more is recommended to be safe), and all travellers transiting in the USA using either a transit visa or the Visa Waiver Program will be photographed and fingerprinted.
• You have previously been denied entry to the US or overstayed in the US, and have been advised that entry may be refused in future. Transit entry is as likely to be refused as any other entry, it will almost certainly be easier to avoid risking it.

Discover America Partnership is a collection of businesses that rely on tourism. They have been complaining that government mistreatment of tourists has become so pervasive that American business is suffering. The U.S. government is scaring away customers. Geoffrey Freedman, of the group, says: "International travelers will tell you that they find that they are treated like criminals, that they are barked at by US officials. They simply feel unwelcome and that is leading them to choose other countries." The group estimates that these actions by Homeland Security thugs has cost around 200,000 jobs in the United States.

A survey of international travelers found that more of them listed the U.S. as the most unpleasant place to visit when it comes to bureaucratic abuse. Freeman noted that a survey showed that foreign visitors have "more fear our immigration officials than of terrorism or crime." (Alas, Mr. Freeman seems to think those are three distinct categories, as the US government proves, they often overlap.) All this means a dramatic drop in tourism.

So now the morons in the U.S. Congress have decided to fix the problem. Congress, which voted in the proposals that are scaring people away, wants to finance a program which will encourage visitors. Please note that none of the Congressvermin are suggesting changing the way we treat tourists. Instead they want to create yet another government program for the purpose of encouraging travel. Of course, such programs cost money. So the idiots in DC are wanting to pass a new tax on foreign visitors. They want to charge tourists who do come to the US an extra $10 on each trip in order to encourage more tourism.

John Burton, the European Commission's Ambassador responded: "Only in Alice in Wonderland could a penalty be seen as promoting the activity on which it is imposed."

Associated Press reports: "Sponsors have been promoting the law as cost-free to the U.S. taxpayer." Even that is not true. US travel thugs have cost the economy hundreds of thousands of jobs. Raising the cost for people to visit the US will only reduce the number of visitors even further. Americans will pay for the stupid proposal in several ways. More jobs will be destroyed and the tourism industry will suffer further declines. Hotels, theme parks, even National Parks will see less business and lower profits.

And the EU says that if the U.S. imposes a new $10 fee on Europeans, even those who aren't require a have a visa to visit, then the EU will consider retaliation by imposing a similar tax on Americans who travel. Personally $10 to get OUT of the Homeland Security States of America might be a bargain. But who wants to pay extra to visit a prison?

Government agents says US Founders were terrorists.

The Homeland Security gestapo continues to march forward. Here is a training session for their Federal Emergency Management Administration. Listen while you hear these agents discussing how the Founding Fathers were terrorists. Consider what that means. Apparently it would justify waterboarding the author of the Declaration of Independence. It would mean torturing and holding, without charges or trial, George Washington or Patrick Henry.

The view of these government agents is simplistic at best and authoritarian in nature. The unspoken premise is that all state control is legitimate thus there are no such things as human rights. I presume that the Jews of the Warsaw ghetto, were terrorists for defending their lives, liberty and property. They should have walked gleefully into the gas chambers and thank God for the mercy that their government was showing them -- they could have died while being tortured instead. Now I don't expect government employees to be very intelligent but these morons simply don't grasp the idea that there are human rights. All they can see is that everyone has the obligation to obey THE STATE and those who don't are terrorists. God save us from these morons. I contend that ultimately this nation is endangered, not by bomb throwing Islamic extremists, but by government agents who believe they have divine sanction to control the lives of others. The real threat to America has never come from without, but from the intellectually corrupt who occupy the offices of power.

A truly frightening story.

There is no doubt to me that the US is becoming a "police state." By that I mean a nation where the police have ceased to protect individuals but become agents of the state. Instead of keeping the peace, remember they were once called peace officers, they have become law enforcement officers. Their function is more and more that of enforcing state policy and protecting the government.

When I was a youngster the very idea of police officers breaking into homes in the middle of the night, armed to the teeth, guns drawn, and screaming at terrified citizens, was unthinkable. Now these armed thugs do it routinely, over the most trivial of offenses. Even the smallest of town, for no conceivable reason, has SWAT teams. We have police forces using tanks as if they are in the center of some war. As horrifying as the militarization of our police has become, what the Explorer Scouts are doing is truly disgusting.

Across the United States we are witnessing the Scouts training young people to be armed government agents. This is directly related to the escalation of violence which the police are using routinely in the United States. Thirty years ago dogs weren't routinely killed by cops. Today it happens over and over. And I can assure you, that in the last thirty years, it wasn't the dogs that got more violent and deadly. It was the police. As I've said before, having anything to do with law enforcement today, is potentially deadly to you. Now we have the Scouts training youth to act like violent cops.

Here is what the New York Times reported on this trend:

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

What the fuck is happening to this country? This is what we are teaching teenagers! I cringe to think how far down the fascistic road this country will go before things change for the better.

The Explorer Scouts say no one has criticized the program. Apparently the only problem they have is police officers who work with them molesting the youth they are training. Now they require them to have "sexual misconduct training" to try and prevent the problem.

It should be no surprise that Homeland Security, the American Gestapo, is heavily involved in these programs. One Border Patrol agent for Homeland Security said the reason for the training is "to create more agents." Worse yet: "Explorer posts are attached to various agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation... that sponsor them much the way churches sponsor Boy Scout troops." One government agent said the program's emphasis "is on terrorism, illegal entry, drugs and human smuggling."

Anyone who is supporting the Scouts at any level really needs to reconsider. I won't even buy Girl Scout cookies anymore.