Cogitamus

THANKSGIVING: Giving Thanks to Senator Russ Feingold

The only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act:

“Some have said rather cavalierly that in these difficult times we must accept some reduction in our civil liberties in order to be secure.

“Of course, there is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country that allowed the police to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country that allowed the government to hold people in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, then the government would no doubt discover and arrest more terrorists.

“But that probably would not be a country in which we would want to live. And that would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that would not be America.”

Thank you, Russ Feingold, and thank you, Kelly Vlahos.

Oh, well . . .

Well, I've been saying it from the beginning.  But what the hell.

Next step for scanners trains, bus, metro, says Napolitano

By Jordy Yager - 11/23/10 02:09 PM ET

70 Percent of Air Travelers Support National Opt-Out Day

Longtime consumer advocate Christopher Elliott reports a turning of the tide:  a weekend poll by the Consumer Travel Alliance indicates that 70% of air travelers now support National Opt-Out Day.

Yes, I know that doesn't mean that 70% of travelers are actually going to opt-out.  When push comes to shove, I understand that many will not.  But it's the support, for now, that's impressive.

Cassandra

ἰοὺ ἰού, ὢ ὢ κακά.

ὑπ᾽ αὖ με δεινὸς ὀρθομαντείας πόνος

στροβεῖ ταράσσων φροιμίοις <δυσφροιμίοις>.

ὁρᾶτε τούσδε τοὺς δόμοις ἐφημένους

νέους, ὀνείρων προσφερεῖς μορφώμασιν;

καὶ τῶνδ᾽ ὅμοιον εἴ τι μὴ πείθω: τί γάρ;

τὸ μέλλον ἥξει. καὶ σύ μ᾽ ἐν τάχει παρὼν

ἄγαν γ᾽ ἀληθόμαντιν οἰκτίρας ἐρεῖς.

Man Arrested for Videotaping TSA Officials While Stripping Down to his Underwear

Another brave soul.  Bravo!

Man Arrested for Videotaping TSA Officials While Stripping Down to his Underwear

In clear contradiction of what Transportation Security Administration officials have stated in the past, a man was arrested for videotaping TSA officials at San Diego International Airport Friday.

Sam Wolanyk was also charged with "failing to complete the security process" - even though he seemed more than happy to allow them to search him when he stripped down to his underwear.

Wolanyk initially was asked to step into the see-through scanner, but opted to have them pat him down instead.

That was when he stripped down to his underwear . . . 

Wolanyk was then paraded through two terminals in his underwear. At one point during this interaction, he videotaped TSA officials with his iPhone, which was confiscated.

The incident was confirmed by Harbor Police Sergeant Rakos who said Wolanyk was arrested on two misdemeanors, “failing to complete the security process; violation code 7.01 and illegally recording the San Diego Airport Authority (they confiscated his iPhone); violation number 7.14 (a).”

 It is not clear which "violation codes" he violated. A search though severalSan Diego city and county codes did not produce anything remotely close to what is listed above . . . .

Young Boy Searched (though not "stripsearched" as header says)

Quoting videographer:  

****** THIS VIDEO OCCURRED AT SALT LAKE CITY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT ON NOVEMBER 19TH AT AROUND THE TIME OF 12 PM **********

Lets get the facts straight first. Before the video started the boy went through a metal detector and didn't set it off but was selected for a pat down. The boy was shy so the TSA couldn't complete the full pat on the young boy. The father tried several times to just hold the boys arms out for the TSA agent but i guess it didn't end up being enough for the guy. I was about 30 ft away so i couldn't hear their conversation if there was any. The enraged father pulled his son shirt off and gave it to the TSA agent to search, thats when this video begins. 

FIVE WORDS

FIVE WORDS:

Philip Zimbardo.

Stanford Prison Experiment.

My Letter to Senators, Congressman About the TSA

(I forgot to mention the trauma for sexual assault victims, the danger of absolute power, and the questionable safety of the machines, but hey, I can't remember everything.  Letter sent via each rep's on-line form with appropriate salutation for each):

November 16, 2010 

Dear Senator Mikulski/Cardin/Congressman Cummings:

[To Elijah Cummings only: I had the honor of meeting you during the last day of early voting in Baltimore earlier this month.  I told you how proud I am of having you as my representative in Congress and how much I appreciated your work on healthcare reform.]

I am writing to protest in the strongest possible terms the abuse and infringement of rights being perpetrated on us by the TSA. 

First of all, the stripsearch scanners were rammed down our throats by corporations who stood to profit from them (such as Rapiscan – how appropriate a name – represented by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff) and by our elected leaders who acted out of haste at best and cowardice at worst.  Second, we now we have punitive and degrading gropefests foisted upon passengers who opt out of the stripsearch scanners.

New Jersey Legislators Take on the TSA

Finally, some people with guts.  Media cowards, don't watch; you'll only upset yourselves.

Senate TSA Oversight Hearing -- Wed Nov 17

The Senate Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security will hold a Transportation Security Administration Oversight Hearing tomorrow.

For more info:
Jena Longo - Democratic Deputy Communications Director, (202) 224-8374
Nov 17 2010 - 10 AM
Russell Senate Office Building - 253

The committee chair is Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) phone (202) 224-6472. The ranking member is Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison 202-224-5922. 

The subcommittee chair is Sen Byron L. Dorgon (D-ND) phone (202) 224-2551. The ranking member is Sen Jim DeMint (R-SC) phone (202) 224-6121. 

Regardless of your home state, call the chairpersons to ask whether recent TSA abuses are on the agenda for the oversight hearing. Ask to speak with the staffer responsible for dealing with issues related to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Here's a list of committee members, their homepages, and phone numbers.  If one of

The TSA -- Always Responding to Yesterday's Attack!

And now comes the news that the TSA is banning printer/toner cartridges -- you know, because of the recent intercepted toner cartridge bombaloos that reportedly originated in Yemen.  That's Homeland Security -- always responding to yesterday's problems!

(Oh, and forget your WiFi, too.)

Not one single terrorist attack has been stopped or thwarted by the TSA -- not one.  The Shoe Bomber and the Crotch Bomber were stopped by passengers, not the TSA.  The result?  First we had to take off our shoes, then we had to surrender our shampoo and mascara, now we have to be stripsearched and groped.  It's only a matter of time before the above scenario is implemented (especially if you stick a toner cartridge up your ass -- you know, because that's something we all try to do).

I can hear the security cheerleaders already:  "Oh, well, it's not such a big deal.  As long as it keeps us safe!  After all, cavity searches aren't going to be the primary method of screening, only the secondary.  The TSA says so!  And after all, what do you have to hide?  If they're singling you out for secondary screening, there must be a reason for it.  Anyway, the search will be done by a medical person.  Like a nurse or something.  A trained medical person.  Why, it's just like going to the doctor!  What's your problem?!"

Keep acquiescing, sheeple.  See where it gets you.

The TSA Meets "Resistance"

As I've written before (here, here, here, and here), the TSA's procedures are nothing more than poltroonish attempts to control us.  They're not about security, they're not about safety, they're about power -- the TSA's power and our lack of it.  Try to dissent from their abuse of that power and they'll make you pay.

Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic has been paying recently, as he writes in this recent article and its follow-up.  

Special Delivery

Hubbub in the skies and on the ground today as U.S. and British authorities swept planes for "suspicious devices."  Story in the NYT.

I'll note only this excerpt, dealing with a matter dear to my heart, as I've written before about TSA abuses and this country's security puffery:

The alert in Britain came just two days after the country’s transport minister said he would listen sympathetically to demands from airlines that security measures for passengers at British airports be eased.

That followed a speech by Martin Broughton, the chairman of British Airways, who criticized the United States for “redundant” checks like screening passengers’ shoes and requiring laptops to be removed from carry-on bags at checkpoints.

Mr. Broughton said there was no need to “kowtow to the Americans every time they want something done.”

Welcome to Baltimore, Hon

 
When people from other parts of the country ask me what Baltimore is like, I always refer to John Waters movies.  "It's just like that," I say.  "His movies aren't fiction; they're real.  That's Baltimore."

I've always reveled in my adopted city's wonderful wackiness, its eccentricities, its characters.  And hoo-boy, are there characters.  (One of them, Divine, lived in my house, long before I moved to Baltimore; I still use the original tub in which his divinity bathed.)

Our Fair City's charms are so inspiring, apparently, that Second City has come to town to check them out.  The fruits of the troupe's labors will be on display from December 30th to February 20th.  I, for one, can't wait to see what they come up with.

More TSA Abuses: Woman Beaten; 71-year-old man & 16-year-old girl groped, stripped

Just another day in the USA!

"We are your neighbors, friends, and relatives"*

 
*first words on the TSA website

I just got back from a business trip requiring me to fly through BWI (Baltimore-Washington International). BWI was one of the first airports in the country to implement the TSA strip-search scanners, but it's the most convenient airport for me. Besides, as the TSA itself tells us in several different places on its website, "advanced imaging technology screening is optional to all passengers."

Many of us on this blog have already discussed the bullshit-o-rama that is airport security, especially the pointless and invasive strip-search scanners. Costing taxpayers billions of dollars, they are the biggest boondoggle to come down the pike in a long time. Like so many of the other procedures we go through at airport checkpoints, they don't make us any safer, they just provide a showy bit of theater in which we all play our parts: we pretend we're actually doing something to protect ourselves from The Terrorists. Because The Terrorists are always On The Verge of Getting Us.

So of course I was prepared to step into my starring role along with everyone else, except that I knew I was going to decline the strip-search scanner.

The Ballad of Steven Slater by Jonathan Mann (NSFW)

Steven Slater Hero Redux

This  was just too good not to post.  Tributes and Legal Defense Funds are popping up all over the web.  MHB and I have already posted two places where you can contribute (see posts below).  But the creativity of bloggers and ordinary people everywhere is inspiring!

Steven Slater - Hero -- *See Update*

As the NYT (and everyone else) is reporting:

Fed-Up Flight Attendant Makes Sliding Exit

Steven Slater is a hero in my book.  (In fact, I'm surprised Sir C didn't beat me to the punch in posting a story about this inspiration to the working class!) 

Even though Americans love to bitch about the airlines, I have witnessed more bad behavior, more often, by passengers than I ever have by airline employees.  There's no comparison.  The rudeness and obnoxiousness and sense of entitlement -- off the charts.  (And yes, I know the so-called security procedures we're forced to go through are bullshit, are ever more intrusive and pointless, and are often perpetrated by the witless, to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars no less.  But none of that is the fault of the airlines.) 

A little courtesy goes a long way.  Yet John and Jane Q. Citizen have for years been more interested in being able to brag that they got a round-trip from Cincinnati to Albuquerque for $79 than in paying the true cost of a flight, and they want to cry-baby about not getting peanuts, a sugary drink, and a blankie in the bargain.

Steven Slater, if you need money for a defense fund, I'm sure I'm not the only person out here who's happy to contribute.

*UPDATE:  You can contribute to the Steven Slater Legal Defense Fund.  Payments are sent through Paypal.  I just ponied up $100, but even if you can ony afford 5 bucks, please do it.  Come on, folks, let's put our money where our mouth is!

S.O.S., Hon

Photo fragments from communist Hungary

Or: a collection found on the street tells the story of minor apparatchiks in love.

Once every couple of months it's big garbage day in my district. This means everyone takes out all the shit they don't want anymore and dumps it on the sidewalk. It's like Queen's Day in Holland, except nobody's selling anything. Mounds of stuff, discarded sofas, broken cupboards, old books, soiled shirts, cardboard boxes and piles of random garbage heaped onto the pavement in clusters.

This means lots of activity. Early in the morning the diggers trek into the neighbourhood. Elderly people, Roma. Stuff gets carted into car trunks, folded into plastic bags. Trabants with trailers that are stacked full take off to the suburbs.

In Holland you had rag and bone men until the sixties or so I think, who would come by to collect stuff that's nowadays hauled off by the municipality's "big trash" service on request. This is like that - just on a really large scale. Mostly it just means a lot of trash you have to circumnavigate when you walk down the street, but at its best, or worst, it has a near-Third World feel. A bony old man pulls a makeshift platform on wheels with cardboard stacked up a meter high down a busy road, passing cars swerving around him.

One of those days, a couple of months ago, we took a walk and rummaged through the piles out of curiosity. Found some dumpy Hungarian textbooks, a couple of novels in seventies covers. And photos. Not once, but twice, we found photos. One pile of photos sprawled over the pavement in Nyár utca, dirtied by shoes, some still shoved into a box along with other papers; postcards too, Christmas cards, holiday greetings from Slovakia. The other, larger pile at the beginning of Dohany Street, across from the synagogue, in a box in between newspapers, random stuff.

Budapest and Dunaújváros

I've dubbed the first collection "The apparatchik". These photos belonged to a couple called Lajos and Zsuzsa Dömötör (I googled them, but found no leads). I assumed at first that Lajos had been a minor official, back under the old regime - but going through the photos and translating the texts of postcards with the help of fellow Flickr members (in particular GCsanadi), it turns out that it was Zsuzsa who must have been the apparatchik. Unfolding the story locked into these photos and postcards turned out to be fascinating - if like me, you're the kind of person who finds fragments from the past's quotidian life the most interesting thing.

Snapshot

She is young, and very attractive. She is brilliant, and very quiet, an emigré from Lithuania, born and weaned behind the Iron Curtain. She speaks so little that, looking back (this was about seven years ago), I can't say for certain whether she struggles with her English on occasion. I think that she does — but it isn't very often — and she definitely speaks with an Eastern European accent.

How to Survive the Apocalypse

Well, as ever, leave it to the Brits.  Nobody else writes with such deadpan humor.  I still have tears running down my face from reading this.  Give this woman a Pulitzer (or whatever it is Brits give to newspaper people who write good stuff):

What if the doomsayers are right ... what if society, as we know it, really is about to collapse? Do you have what it takes to make it in a world without electricity and running water? Tanya Gold offers an essential survival guide.

(H/T to Bill in Balto)

The World Rejoices: Obama Sand Sculpture

Sorry I couldn't find a bigger picture, though it's all over the internet so you can look at multiple sources.  Sudarshan Patnaik is apparently a famous sand artist -- yes, he built that thing out of sand, on the golden beaches of tourist-destination Puri in India.  Articles here and here, and yet another of his congratulatory sculptures here. 

There are so many people all over the world as happy as we are today, and they're expressing that happiness in all kinds of creative ways.  Obamanos!

Prepare to Be Dazzled - The World of Lord Breaulove Swells Whimsy

                              

This is a smaller-than-life-size image of one of the pages in the book The Affected Provincial's Companion, a compendium of -- how to describe it? -- aesthetic musings, sartorial suggestions, historical anecdotes, philosophical levity, personal tidbits, political implications, botanical info, witty illustrations, helpful diagrams, and general silliness.  It's the work of the sweetly twisted mind of Lord Whimsy (not to be confused with the fictional Lord Peter Wimsey of Dorothy L. Sayers fame), one of whose blogs is listed on the Cogblogroll to the left, but whose work I've long wanted to highlight yet didn't dare do during the deadly serious election season.

Lord Whimsy is actually Victor Allen Crawford who, with his wife Susan, runs the graphic design firm Plankton Art Co.  If you want to engage him professionally, you can get him there.  But if you just want to drink in his perfumed peculiarities, you're better off going to his alter ego's website, where you can find, among other things, his manifesto, pictures of strange lichens and fungi, colors, textures, and other images of beauty, and even political statements such as this: