Common Sense RIP

America's airports have become common sense-free zones.

“It could be a bomb!”, bellowed the oafish Denver International Airport TSA official peering closely at my 10-year old son’s travel souvenir. The surfing bears inside the transparent plastic pencil holder sloshed about gently on the oil and water mixture.

I pointed to my wife and 10-year old twins. "Does this look like a terrorist cell?”

He handed the toy back to my wife. “You have time to check it in upstairs.”

So now we know. Potential bombs on planes are fine as long as they are not hand luggage. And once inside the cabin, just what would we have used to melt the hermetically sealed container and ignite the “lethal liquid” to achieve our devilish family suicide pact? The in-flight vinaigrette salad dressing?

Next to me, a TSA troll was sticking her latex paws down the trousers of a seriously crippled and resigned-looking elderly lady in a wheel chair. In a third ring of the security freakshow, a fellow TSA goon was busy reducing another elderly female passenger to tears (they are so tough and brave, the TSA!) while her traveling companions stared helplessly in disbelief. It was the TSA at its best.

My wife returned from her second visit to the check-in counter and declined a bonus porno-scan. In the interests of freedom and democracy, she was whisked off for a mandatory grope and warned not to touch her children en route to the TSA perverts’ playroom.

Her escort happened to be the same security gangstress who had told me off earlier for the way I had placed my laptop in the plastic tray. “Next time, don’t put anything on top of the laptop.” I didn’t bat an eyelid. “Save your breath. This is the last time I travel to the United States”.

I too issued warnings as I passed through the voyeur-chamber: “What you are doing is totally unconstitutional”. The po-faced sheep herders in headsets remained silent. How naïve of me. The US Constitution was trashed years ago. Just ask George W. Bush and the US Congress.

I fell into an exchange with a disgruntled male traveler who on principle “opted out” of the scan, going reluctantly (or so he said) for the grope instead. He turned out to be ideologically right-wing but we found some libertarian common ground. “Did you know that Chertoff’s client got the contract for the porno-scanners?”, I asked him. “No, I didn’t!” He seemed startled to learn this. “They’re all in bed with each other”, he said shaking his head.

It was his turn to impress. “Did you know these useless machines cost $330,000 each? And these guys!” He nodded towards the airport Gestapo. “The Thousands Standing Around (nice one!) get a minimum salary of $42,000 and get all the benefits of the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act). And now they want to unionise!” A union for licensed power-hungry perverts?!? Who said that progressive politics was dead in the United States!

Time for some easy mental maths. A thousand of Chertoff’s Confession Boxes (that’s the target for America’s airports by the end of 2011) cost roughly 1/3 of a billion US dollars. And just wait till Janet “God’s Gift to Safe Travel” Napolitano’s dream comes true of hordes of TSA primitives similarly humiliating commuters at every major bus terminal and train station in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave (and the Totally Broke).

My enlightenment wasn’t merely financial. For here I was witnessing first-hand the consequences of the destruction of common sense and with it the extinction of two previously unassailable and centuries-old values: the presumption of childhood innocence and respect for the elderly, precious cornerstones of civilization. Stamp out common sense, as the TSA does daily and enthusiastically with millions of air travelers, and you are left with headless chicken notions of chemical mixing 10-year-old suicide bombers and immobile grannies itching to detonate false limbs.

But as Madeleine Albright once said of America’s imperial arsenal, what is the point of all this equipment and power if you are not going to use it? Besides, the Department of Homeland Security assures us that air travel is a privilege, not a right, and if you don’t like it THEN YOU CAN WALK!

Not so fast, reptiles. In normal countries, those who are scared to fly on planes carrying ungroped/unscanned children and grannies are the ones who walk. Still, it’s a safe bet that once Napolitano is through “securing” America’s transportation system, the traveling public will be so damned “privileged” that cows, sheep, and pigs will have more traveling rights.

One final thought. Just how does Napolitano plan to force overseas security officials to electronically and physically molest passengers flying to America’s airports?

I guess they can all swim to New York if they don’t like it, right Janet?

If you want an image of the future, imagine a TSA hand groping your private parts forever.

Here is the good news - boots no longer have to stomp on human faces. Americans are voluntarily surrendering their right not to be physically molested by the government. At least that’s what the TSA claims on its Orwellian website. A helpful Completely Bought Sycophants (ie. CBS) poll reveals that 4 out of 5 Americans agree with the complete body scan. Wow. That’s a helluva lot of sheep!

Hang on. Isn’t this precisely the sort of government abuse the Tea Party swore to oppose? Have you heard a single peep of protest from these Glenn Beck-worshipping frauds? Why did they not rush to defend John Tyner, the brave young man who told the TSA to fuck-off? What does this tell you about the Tea Party’s commitment to individual liberty?

“If we don’t like it, we don’t have to fly” And what about tens of thousands of daily business travelers? What about emergency fliers? Surely it is those who are too nervous to share a plane with unmolested grannies and 8-year olds who should be catching the bus.

“But it’s the age in which we live”, Joe Liebermann assures us above the din of squealing Department of Homeland Security piggies feeding from the trough of porno-scanner contracts. Wrong Joe. It’s the age which you and your fellow scoundrels are trying to impose on us.

“But what about the underpants bomber?” Oh, you mean the guy who was on a no-fly list and was still allowed to board a plane? So instead of enforcing the existing rules, you prefer to put thousands in the pockets of Michael Chertoff Consultants Inc. and humiliate millions of totally harmless air travellers day in and day out?

Will the TSA scumbags win? They certainly have the upper hand. A “scare” can be easily manufactured to quell protests.

Meanwhile these clueless control freaks are subjecting pilots to the same humiliation. Just how do these idiots reckon a porno-scanner or a good grope is going to stop a "suicide pilot" already armed with a pistol in the cockpit from deliberately crashing a plane?

And what happens when the evil ones (I refer now to the suicide bombers) “pull off a Madrid” on American soil? Think of all those crowded trains, tubes, buses, stadiums which are potential targets. Will TSA start zapping and fondling everyday commuters?

Enough is enough. Boycott travel to and within the United States until the government restores fundamental human dignity to their air travelers.

“Hey, hey, TSA - how many kids d’ya grope today?”

Pass it on.

My choice for this year’s Peace Prize – The Reverend Terry Jones

Terry Jones - Closet antiwar activist?

Reverend Terry Jones is a crackpot, a bigot and probably inbred. Yet his plan to burn hundreds of copies of the Koran has lifted my spirits:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11209738

American troop commanders are up in arms over the Florida pastor’s proposed bonfire. David Petraeus has said that this could cause problems “not just in Kabul but all over the world.” Protestors have begun burning effigies of the unhinged preacher.

The Koran-burning is the latest in an epidemic of Islamophobia that is sweeping the United States. It’s hardly surprising. America’s multiple wars are going badly, the economy is doing worse, people are losing hope. Scapegoats abound.

The American Constitution, however, guarantees Reverend Terry’s right to burn any literature he wishes as long as the fire doesn’t endanger his neighbour’s property.

The irony, of course, is that the reverend has himself become a scapegoat for a war that was lost long ago. Burning the Koran, according to Petraeus, “could endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort" says Petraeus. "It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems.”

Let’s hope it does. The reverend’s gesture should be supported precisely because it will cause problems for the US occupiers and therefore speed up our departure from Afghanistan and hopefully from the entire Islamic world.

"Not just here, but everywhere in the world, we are engaged with the Islamic community," insisted Petraeus in a plea to the Rev. Jones. Just ignore him, Reverend Terry, and get cracking with that fire. We’ve seen the tools of American “engagement’ at work: sanctions, killer drones, air strikes, torture, rendition, depleted uranium and white phosphorus.

So stoke those flames high and bring on the Korans!!! And don’t forget the hot dogs and the marshmallows.

PS. A tip for the reverend - these work really well in case you run low on fuel:

http://www.amazon.com/Journey-My-Political-Life/dp/0307269833/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Bernie the Implausible Anti-Semite

Will Congress recognise Bernie's services to Israel?


I remember someone arguing many years ago that Stalin was the greatest anti-communist of the 20th century. What is the proof? I asked. "Look at the millions of communists he killed!" was the reply.

By the same logic, Bernie Madoff is the greatest anti-semite of the 21st century. Look how many Jewish families he ruined financially.

Like most personality cult investment managers, Bernie was in the "giving" business. The arch-swindler diverted tons of supposed fee income from stellar investment performance to his favourite Jewish charities. In reality, the "fee income" was the vast sums handed over by his gullible country club acquaintances many of whom thought they were investors in the Madoff bonanza and who are still coming to terms with the fact that they were not Bernie's best friends. To paraphrase the old Gentile saying, Bernie robbed Hymie to pay Shlomo. Surely this proves there was no religious bias to the scam.

Not so fast. We still don't know where most of the money went. Did he lose it in the markets? Is it hidden in a Swiss bank account? Or did it travel to Israel? The last possibility is the most intriguing because it is the one that could bestow Robin Hood status upon the crook of the century (and perhaps for eternity). What if Bernie diverted money from those stingy East Coast Jews and funneled it all into special offshore Jewish causes, ie. Mossad front companies? What would the reaction be in the States? One can picture the headlines in the New York Times: "The Madoff Affair: All For A Good Cause" accompanied by Tom Friedman in the op-ed pages explaining how if only Congress would give more to Israel, then people like Madoff wouldn't feel the need to steal on behalf of our deserving little democratic ally in the Middle East.

Of course things will never be allowed to go so far. The Bernie Madoff scandal represents the biggest threat to Israel's image as an unimpeachable ally of the United States since the Pollard case. The longer the silence on the whereabouts of the missing funds, the more suspicious we should be that the money has left the country for good and that a water-tight alibi is being prepared under the guidance of AIPAC and their useful idiots in Congress, this time with the full cooperation of the "slumbering" SEC.

Maybe Hilary won after all?

Is Obama waving goodbye to "change"?

It definitely felt like a hangover. I hit the sack at 4 am only to be woken 3 hours later by my 8-year old son. He was hovering over me. "Can you tie my school tie, daddy?" Then my wife intensified the misery. "Steve, you have to find Christopher's football gear. He has practise today." Some way to celebrate the end of the worst presidency in American (or do I mean human?) history.

Still, I managed to smile. Our decrepit war hero and his village idiot partner had been cast into the dustbin of history. The morally bankrupt Republican Party melted down to irrelevance. Altogether, it was a pretty satisfying result although it's frightening to think that McCain/Palin somehow managed to secure 45% of the vote.

The media couldn't get enough of the biggest global party of the century. Images of joyous Americans, Germans, French, Indonesians, Kenyans dominated newspapers and television. The verdict on 8 years of Bush was crystal clear. One has to go back to the overthrow of Nicolae Ceaucescu to recall such unmitigated joy.

Yet we need to be careful. Obama has not brought change to America. All that is certain is that a change in American thinking has brought Obama to power. The authenticity of Obama's change will be revealed through his choice of cabinet. Indeed, it is instructive to note who is not popping open the champagne.

While Chicago danced in the park, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced that Russia will station short-range missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave, a clear response to America's "anti-Iranian" missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Is this the "test" that the prophet and self-proclaimed Zionist Joe Biden warned of during the election campaign? I pray that it is. Will Obama lower the temperature and pledge to dismantle the shield? Or will he continue to maintain the fiction of the threat of an Iranian missile strike on Europe? Russia, it seems, is demanding early proof of "change".

Unfortunately with America facing crises on so many different fronts (wars, economy, health, energy), the conventional wisdom is that Obama must assemble a cabinet ASAP. This plays into the hands of the Clintons and their mafia who are more than ready to infiltrate the corridors of power in the name of "experience". Veteran interventionists of the Clinton years such as Richard Holbrooke and Strobe Talbott have returned to the op-ed pages of the Guardian and the FT urging the new administration to stand-up to Russia "aggression" and obstruct Serbian "mischief" in Bosnia. A Clintonian offensive to re-capture the levers of foreign policy appears to be well underway.

There are other bad signs. Obama has already appoined Clintonite Rahm Emmanuel as his Chief of Staff. The powers of the Chief of Staff are not defined in the Constitution (who reads that obsolete document these days anyway) but he controls who gets to see the President. It is an alarming first step in sealing off Obama from those who may see the world differently from the Clintons.

I have a horrible sense of deja vu.

The ICARUS Principle

Maybe the Pentagon is right. Maybe Camp X-ray is full of dangerous jihadists.

Ever hear of ICARUS? Not the ancient Greek story of the boy whose wings melted when he flew too close to the sun but a modern variation of one of the oldest human truths, ie. "It's Called Armed Revenge on the US, Stupid."

ICARUS is absent from all mainstream US political analysis of the Middle East. A fine example is the recent ham-fisted attempt to spin a suicide bombing in Mosul. The Pentagon whores at the New York Times dutifully reported that the bomber, a Kuwaiti national captured in Afghanistan and handed over to the Americans in 2002 by some Northern Alliance boy scouts, "returned" to terrorism after his release from Camp Xray in 2005.

Stop right there. Does anyone for a moment think that the Americans would take the risk of freeing a proven terrorist? The Pentagon PR machine, however, is in a tight spot because if this inmate didn't "return" to terrorism then there is only one other much more frightening and wholly inadmissible conclusion, namely that our Kuwaiti friend TURNED to terrorism to avenge his treatment in Gitmo.

So now we see why the foot-shooters in the Pentagon prefer to hold the remaining 300 prisoners in indefinite legal limbo. There is every likelihood that 8 years of tender loving care in Camp X-ray has converted a number of unlucky detainees into super-jihadists.

But only, of course, if you believe in the "myth" of ICARUS.

A Fitting End (or the Politics of "Deliverance")

Bah golly ah'd jes luv to shoot rabbits with ya'll!!




Those nauseating toads at CNN are playing make-believe again. We all have to pretend that the West Virginia primary is a significant political event whose result will affect the outcome of the Democratic nomination. No one, it seems, has the guts to call Horrible Hillary what she really is - a washed-up loser clinging to wreckage of a campaign that totally misjudged the mood of the Democratic Party. Instead everyone speaks of the need to tiptoe around Hillary's feelings until she is ready to concede defeat like parents of a spolied child, petrified of provoking a tantrum.

How Ole Hill' miscalculated! She banked on media-hyped nostalgia for her horny hubby and her eagerness to obliterate Iran to secure the nomination yet somehow she managed to lose to a guy whose name sounds suspiciously like Osama bin Laden. Like Humpty Dumpty, not even the storm-troopers of the Israel lobby could put her together again. Even worse, Tinsel Town has deserted her. How it must have stung to watch one ultra-bleeding heart after another throw support behind Obama. The only progressive thing about the Clintons these days, it seems, is their irrelevance to American politics.

What a delicious irony though! Who would have guessed 3 months ago that the real elitist liberal in this contest would finish up as the race-baiting trailer park trash candidate? The Clintons, written off by ordinary folk long ago as classic out-of-touch Washington insiders, have re-invented themselves possibly (and hopefully) for the very last time. How long before Hillary swaps her dreary campaign uniform for combat fatigues and a Support Our Troops baseball cap? How long before she crosses the border into Kentucky, shoulder-to-shoulder with her bourbon-swiggin' raccoon-shootin' diehard supporters in the back of a Ford pick-up plastered with Jesus Loves You bumper stickers? (An' jes cos' she's worth millions of bucks don't mean she can't feel what them God-fearin' Blue Ridge mountin folk is feelin'. Maybe that's why she's driving her campaign into debt. She needs some financial street credibility when she drones on about making ends meet.)

So here is where it probably ends. Not with a prime-time coronation or bear hugs from Oscar winners on the podium of the Democratic convention this August but in the God-foresaken political junkyard of gun-totin' backwoods bigots and hip-flasked hicks straight out of the film "Deliverance". More or less where the long journey to the White House began in Arkansas many years ago. Re-invention humbug. Welcome home Hillary and Bill!!