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Guns kill ten times more Americans every year than were killed in the 911 attacks. Cars kill even more Americans than guns. Cigarettes and fast food each kill several times as many people as guns. Yet, what are we supposed to be so frightened of that we allow ourselves to be treated as less than human every time we go to the airport? Terrorism?
Enough!
In case you haven't heard of John Tyner, here's a brief description of his act of heroism. (WLWT.com)
A man who refused a body scan and pat-down search at a San Diego airport has become an Internet sensation in the debate weighing fliers' security versus their privacy.
John Tyner posted a cell phone audio recording of his half-hour encounter Saturday at Lindbergh Field.
The software engineer couldn't board a flight after refusing a full-body scan that reveals an image of what's under his clothes. He also wouldn't allow a Transportation Security Administration worker to conduct a groin check. Tyner told the worker, "If you touch my junk, I'm gonna have you arrested."
Tyner's blog said he left the airport -- but only after being threatened with a lawsuit and fine for failing to complete security screening.
The fear of terrorism is leading to airport insanity. Remember when Bush was babbling about "they hate us for our freedom." Well, the War on Terror has been used to systematically chip away at our freedom. Airport screening is an extreme example of it.
The body scanners use either X Rays or Gamma Rays, both of which are highly carcinogenic and cause birth defects. So, if you don't want to subject yourself to this, you have to go through pat downs, which often are taken to sexually harassing extremes.
The reality is that terrorists find ways around every airport screening technique. So, even if terrorism was a major risk, this still would be a failed policy, from a security standpoint.
If this country relied more on in person intelligence than on flooding intelligence services with an overload of useless information gathered through everyone's emails, text messages, and phone calls, that would do a whole lot more to prevent terrorist attacks than humiliating and sexually harassing passengers or sending carcinogenic radiation through their bodies.
But, fighting terrorism isn't the real goal. The real goal is to make us so scared that we don't start thinking and questioning what is being done to us as Americans and as human beings. The people making money off of wars and corruption would like nothing better than for us to all snivel at the thoughts of the terrorist boogie man.
We live in a society that is so narcotized by corporate products that we seem incapable of admitting that Crappy Meals are literally more dangerous than terrorists. We doze at the real threats while scurrying like mice at the small stuff.
The TSA does this not for security or to make us feel safe, it's to make us--the masses--accept our status as peasants. After all, the corporate thieves, their political whores and minor celebrities don't have to have their tits and junk felt up. We need to stop this. Now. Or they won't stop with a pat down. That's a fact.
Personally, I don't mind full body scans. I am a female, overweight senior citizen and I don't care if some unknown person in a closed room sees it all. (I'd be much more upset if someone I knew saw me naked.) I think of the passages in Twain's "Life on the Mississippi" where he describes that learning the river to become a riverboat pilot caused him to no longer see the beauty of the river. Everything he saw was a sign of a river condition which he needed to know for his job. I can imagine that those people looking at full-body scans no longer see genitals or breasts as sex objects or find a big belly or butt laughable, It is just a job and viewing a naked body is not much different than viewing scanned luggage.
I don't fly often, but I will be flying several times within the next year. I'm willing to trade my privacy for safety.
Apparently 81% of the American public agree with me. (Not that being in the majority means we are right.) If you don't like the scans, you can always take a bus.
Pissed: There definitely is an element of keeping the masses down.
CWoods: There are three reasons for the public's support. First, very few people have made an issue of this. Second, most people are unaware of the cancer risks of the body scans. Third, the minimal risks of terrorism have been wildly exagerated by the politicians and the corporate media.
Wouldn't it be interesting to see what the "free market" would produce if an airline opted out of of the radiation poisoning and frisking passengers like supected criminals?
Imagine if passengers had the choice where all they did was pass through a metal detector and nobody had to take off their shoes and wait the extra time to be processed like a prisoner and only suspicious persons were sent to the invasive searches.
If only we lived in a free country...