Close down the TSA! In the atmosphere of politically correct authoritarianism in which we live, the TSA cannot focus on the actual source of the threat to air security, and so has apparently opted to zero in not only on "Middle Easterners," but also on "Hispanics traveling to Miami, for instance, or blacks wearing baseball caps backward." Yet when in recent memory did Hispanics traveling to Miami, or blacks wearing baseball caps backward ever commit a large-scale air hijacking and terror attack?
By doing this, TSA officials open themselves up to the charges of racism that are the preoccupation of this New York Times article. And so aside from the idiocy of the TSA, the goal of the article is nothing short of sinister: as Jihad Watch reader Bill put it, "the obvious tactic" of the Times article and the groups that are protesting against the TSA practices "is to assail and indict the process by inviting Blacks and Hispanics along for the ride, then getting the baby (security) thrown out with the bathwater (claims of discrimination)."
"Racial Profiling Rife at Airport, U.S. Officers Say," by Michael S. Schmidt and Eric Lichtblau for the New York Times, August 11 (thanks to all who sent this in):
BOSTON — More than 30 federal officers in an airport program intended to spot telltale mannerisms of potential terrorists say the operation has become a magnet for racial profiling, targeting not only Middle Easterners but also blacks, Hispanics and other minorities.Reagan National Airport in Washington is one of more than 150 airports that are already using behavior detection officers.
In interviews and internal complaints, officers from the Transportation Security Administration’s “behavior detection” program at Logan International Airport in Boston asserted that passengers who fit certain profiles — Hispanics traveling to Miami, for instance, or blacks wearing baseball caps backward — are much more likely to be stopped, searched and questioned for “suspicious” behavior.
“They just pull aside anyone who they don’t like the way they look — if they are black and have expensive clothes or jewelry, or if they are Hispanic,” said one white officer, who along with four others spoke with The New York Times on the condition of anonymity.
The T.S.A. said on Friday that it had opened an investigation into the claims....
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Is it not the job of the TSA to prevent air terrorism? Then profile, get the job done!
Anything otherwise, what is the point? Frisking down the 82-year-old nun in a wheelchair is like looking for the ring lost down the street only at the streelight a half-block away because the light's better.
I can't figure out why the TSA refuses to adopt Israeli security (effective) procedures. Well, actually I can - post-modern thinking has no regard for anything except the narrative of those in power, and policy unbound by logic or objective truth can drift wherever they see fit. Therefore political correctness trumps everything else. At least until reality collides with the lie.