Category: The World

Act IX: Elites and Cattle

The latest thing on the desk of Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Edmund S. “Kip” Hawley sounds like a good deal at first. We won’t have to take our shoes off for the TSA Safety Dance at the airport. That is, unless we set off the metal detectors or the TSA employee thinks we are acting suspicious. Furthermore, buying a one-way ticket or buying on short notice will no longer automatically get your ticket marked for extended screening. Apparently, someone realized out that there are plenty of legit reasons this might happen, and Real Terrorists have figured out that this will single them out.

They are also planning — pending Kip’s approval — on lifting the ban on certain sharp objects, such as scissors, small pocketknives, razor blades, throwing stars, icepicks, and arrows. Now, doesn’t that make you feel better? Not only will you not have your swiss army knife confiscated, you can put your shurikens in your carry on bag. No worries!

The new rules also aim to minimize the number of patdowns, and reducing patdowns is a good thing. Or, more precisely, reducing unnecessary patdowns is a good idea. Some are going to be necessary, but there ought to be a clear protocol that is followed.

The controversial bit is that the recommendations are “certain categories of passengers be exempt from airport security screening, such as members of Congress, airline pilots, Cabinet members, state governors, federal judges, high-ranking military officers and people with top-secret security clearances.” There are many problems with this. First, it assumes that these people are universally trustworthy, universally sane, universally Not A Terrorist. I think this is a big assumption.

The next big problem is identifying these people. Would you know your Congressman if you saw him crossing the street? Me neither. I think I have a good shot at recognizing my Senators and maybe even the top ten most influential Senators. Are we honestly talking about letting people flash a “top sekrit” ID at the TSA guy and passing through security unmolested? I can’t see biometrics solving this problem. I anticipate a great market for fake IDs, and incredibly increased risk of identity theft for the air travel elites.

And that brings us straight to the next big problem, that this creates a small group of elite fliers and a huge mass of normal people lining up like cattle before the magic TSA checkpoint. This system makes the cattle line longer, because the TSA employee who could be helping move the line faster is instead checking the credentials of the elite. This will cause some resentment among the cattle, but they know better than to say anything, lest they be accused of “acting suspicious.” This system is self-entrenching, because the elite no longer know what it is like to be in the cattle line, no longer know what it is like to be singled out for additional security, no longer know what it is like to get a patdown, no longer experience the absurdities of the system — they no longer know what it is like to be a normal, average person — but they certainly have no desire to eliminate this valuable fringe benefit for themselves.

In short, a Do Not Search list is even dumber than a Do Not Fly list.

Act X: Big Brother says it’s a Secure Flight

“Just weeks after congressional investigators found that officials in charge of a new airline passenger-screening system violated a federal privacy law, the Department of Homeland Security is pushing Congress to reduce oversight of the program and to allow it to use commercial databases to screen for terrorists.” Or, “Yeah, we messed up. We broke the law. So you caught us. Now can you stop paying attention, please?” In fact, it turns out that they are destroying millions of records they shouldn’t have, or as some prefer to call it, “evidence.”

Secure Flight wants to gather up information on law abiding American citizens. They would like to aggregate the kind of data the Feds already have on you — tax records, date of birth, etc — with the kind of data the big commercial consumer databases have on you — credit info, what kind of peanut butter you buy with your Shopper’s Savings Club card, what’s on your Amazon wish/recommendations list, how expensive your house is — and probably the data that can be gleaned from an average everyday search engine (yeah, I bet the Feds know I write this stuff). Now, unless you can think of some reason that Terrorists might prefer Skippy over Jif, collecting this level of information is absurd.

However, both houses of Congress have “prohibit[ed] Secure Flight from using commercial databases or using computer software to profile passengers, a reflection of congressional concern over the Transportation Security Administration’s privacy scandals,” thus gutting the entire purpose of Secure Flight, trying to figure out from various data sources and computer models whether someone is likely to be a terrorist before they get to the airport. It leads one to wonder what exactly the point of allowing Secure Flight to continue is.

Ah yes, this is Security Theatre, and all the world’s a stage.

Today, I bring you two articles by prominent Africans that basically say:

Dear G8 nations,

Please stop sending us aid! Not that we aren’t grateful for what you’ve given over the years, but we are starting to think that we are coming out on the short end of the stick.

For example, subsidized food is great — that is, when it actually gets to the people who need it instead of being hijacked by greedy dictators or sitting on a dock rotting or being withheld for favors — but our farmers can’t compete with “almost free.” Famine relief is driving them out of business!

And AIDS. It turns out that when you actually run tests, it isn’t anywhere near as prevalent as we thought. We have discovered the hard way what you learned over a decade ago, you can’t tell whether someone has AIDS from looking at them and hearing them cough. It turns out that Malaria is a much bigger problem.

You know what you can do? Get more nations in on debt relief. And don’t erect artificial barriers to African immigrants in your countries that want to send money home to their families. And help us get our education infrastructure in order so we can make the best of our resources and tell when our government is the problem.

Thanks!
Africa

Last night, I was listening to the late-night guy on Air America when he took at call from a lady who began by saying “I still have the ID card the Nazis gave me” when they over-ran Austria. The caller was very concerned that she saw distinct parallels between what happened to her homeland as a child, and what was happening in America today. She did not elaborate in detail, but a good history book can fill in the blanks.

Under skillful questioning by Mr. Malloy, she described having to present her card at every checkpoint she passed in the city. These checkpoints were fortified with machine-gun turrets. Finally, she was asked to describe the cards. She said they had her name, picture, address, thumbprint, the name of her school, and physical description, including distinguishing marks. This sounds to me like it’s a Social Security Number short of the Real ID requirements. If you haven’t written your Congresscritters and State officials, do that now, mmkay?

Of course, your Representatives in the House have been too busy to repeal Real ID. Fixing Social Security? Finding money for unfunded Federal mandates? Getting the Federal Budget ready for fiscal year 2006? Figuring out how to get Iraq stable enough that we can bring our soldiers home? No, nothing like that. They’ve been working on a Constitutional Amendment that would allow Congress to prohibit “Flag Desecration.”

Now then, unless my grasp of symbolism is totally astray, in which case the wine falling off the wagons at the beginning of “A Tale of Two Cities” is nothing more than wine and “A Separate Peace” was actually a good book, the Flag is a symbol. Once we start venerating symbols, we veer into a realm of idolatry. The reasoning is that by “Desecrating” a flag you are harming the country. Countless times I have heard veterans speak of how they fought for their flag. Personally, I’d like to think they fought for their country, represented by the flag, rather than killing other human beings over a bit of fabric.

Now think about this for a minute. Which would you rather a group of protesters did, burn a flag, or burn a courthouse? Those are two different things, right?

Dictators have known for decades that once you regulate what one can say and do regarding a symbol, you can regulate what one can say and do regarding what that symbol represents. The whole thing seems silly, until people start getting punished.

As if this stuff wasn’t scary enough all by itself, the Supreme Court has now ruled that municipalities can now seize any land they chose to allow “economic development.” The case in question concerns a middle-class residential community on the river. Such land is just too valuable to let mere single-family homes stand. Although I imagine this case would never have gotten to the Supreme Court if multi-million dollar homes were involved. This case should scare the pants off residents of mobile homes in metropolitan areas. For that matter, anyone who owns property now stands to lose it at the whim of some city council that receives sufficient bribes — excuse me, I meant to say incentives — from some developer.

Yet when I read this, it sounded strangely familiar. Ah yes, here it is. In Zimbabwe, the government has ordered poor areas of town bulldozed for economic development. Of course the United States has officially proclaimed that “bad.” I guess American companies aren’t making any money off the deal.

By way of disclaimer, I am not an expert on Far East cultures, history, and politics. Nor am I an expert in Korean affairs, despite the fact that in any given week I converse (in English!) with several native Korean speakers. When all is said and done, I plan to run this post past my friend Plunge, who is an expert (and a humanitarian, but that’s another issue).

United States policy on North Korea has been called “incoherent” and “a comic opera” by people who are in a position to know. But that was before it became clear that there were real live nukes involved — not that evidence of possible nuclear based research stuff that was all we could ever prove about Saddam Hussein. To say this is straining regional relationships is an understatement. Knowing that your next door neighbor is in a position to blow stuff up will make anybody nervous.

The United States, mostly in the person of a Mr. Christopher Hill, is trying to add fuel to the fire by saying stuff like there are “‘increasing doubts’ that President Kim Jong Il’s government was ready to give up its nuclear weapons program in return for security guarantees and economic incentives,” and China isn’t putting enough pressure on North Korea but far be it from us to tell China it’s business and my favorite line, North Korea will give up it’s nuclear weapons “one way or another.” Now, where I come from, those are fighting words.

This kind of rhetoric leads some Democratic Senators to question our current policies and flat out say what Hill implies: Are we looking for “regime change”? Because it sure sounds that way. Why don’t you guys figure out what you are going to do before you go threatening sovereign nations, mmkay?

The United States military already has substantial forces committed in Afghanistan and Iraq for the foreseeable future. And Mr. Hill sounds like he wants to start war on a third front. We already have serious problems recruiting for the military, meaning that news sources around the world are reporting that we may need to reinstate the draft. And let’s not forget that unlike Iraq, North Korea actually has nuclear weapons and more mouths than they can feed. Losing a few citizens might not be such a bad deal to North Korea. They also have a “Dear Leader” who has been described as “obsessed” and a “megalomaniac.”

Yeah, let’s go ahead and stick our hand in that hornet’s next. Where would you like that mushroom cloud?

In closing, I bring you common sense on identity theft, coming to our senses about what we can require of foreign passports, and “follow the money” on potential Presidential hopefuls. From the lighter side, an eagle delivers dinner, something for those of you without air conditioning, and brilliant satire on Big Media News.

It seems like the “news” has been dominated by things that are at best of local interest. Now, it is one thing for your local news to cover local stories, it is alright for industry news to be covered in the appropriate forum, it is fine to have a minute dedicated to fluffy items like entertainment news. But as I write, the top stories from the Associated Press and Reuters include things that are just not of national relevance. Top stories should be important, darn-it.

So which item is more important?

Jury deliberates fate of washed-up pop star, or banking information on almost 4 million people lost and potentially available for identity theft?

Under-supervised teenage girl on international trip vanishes after being seen on the dance floor with strange men at 1:30 AM a week ago, or Supreme Court affirms that Federal drug laws supersede state medical marijuana laws?

Some movie star allegedly slugs some guy you don’t know or changes to Federal housing assistance programs may result in thousands more homeless families, some of them in a community near you?

Missing woman turns out not to have been abducted, and has been working under her own name and Social Security Number for years, or large bank buys large credit card issuer — what’s in your wallet?

Some actress wonders why tabloids care about her life at all, (oh, the irony that this is a top news item on CNN), or the mounting trail of evidence that the Bush Administration was trying to get us to war in Iraq despite scant grounds. (Think that stinks? Read this and add your own signature)

Randi put it most succinctly: The News has been cancelled.

Finally, I bring you all that needs to be said about Mark Felt, and not one, but two brokerages downgrade the company that owns Olive Garden and Red Lobster and Smokey Bones and Bahama Breeze restaurants because, among other reasons, “traditional economic drivers of the restaurant industry, such as employment levels, interest rates, wages and consumer sentiment, may be poised to ‘become a drag by the end of 2005’….” Maybe the economy is great in Larry Kudlow’s world, but here in reality-land, we are talking about whether or not Joe and Jane Average will have enough money for dinner at Olive Garden in December.

Certain people would like you to believe that the riot of Afghanis in Pakistan resulting in multiple deaths was caused by a Newsweek article about alleged “Quran abuse” by American torturers. Logic defies this explanation.

First, they want you to think Newsweek, an American publication written in English, is widely read in Afghanistan. Think about that. I haven’t read a Newsweek outside a Dentist’s office in over a decade, but they want you to think Afghanis read it regularly enough to catch one sentence in a story.

Next, they want you to believe that this is a new accusation, which The World is just now hearing about. The truth is this has been known about and reported by various sources for 2 years. When Newsweek retracted the story, they merely said they could no longer confirm their source, not that it hadn’t happened. The Washington Post confirmed today that at almost a dozen former detainees claim this happened. How many sources does Newsweek need?

They would like you to believe that the Afghanis have nothing better to riot about. No, no problems in their homeland! Never mind the occupying army to whom the local government can’t even make suggestions, despite a “strategic partnership” between the occupied and occupying nations. Strategic partnership? Did I slip through a time rift into the Dot-Com boom? Oh, and never mind the fact that they aren’t even being allowed to rebuild their own nation.

No, they are too busy worrying about somebody peeing on a book halfway across the world. Yeah, right. Indeed, the Department of Defense said the riots had nothing to do with Newsweek. Olbermann is right.

This isn’t about Afghanistan, and it’s only barely about Newsweek. It’s about control of the media.

Update 5/26/2005: follow up

So Real ID got passed, snuck into a must-pass military funding bill that nobody dared vote against lest the next opponent’s campaign flog the idea however false that they voted against our troops! It was put there specifically to avoid debate and ensure passage. Now what?

If you are not sure why Real ID is bad, you can start with this nice summary from UnrealID.com. Here’s security expert Bruce Schneier on why it won’t actually make anybody more secure (and might even make us less secure). Here’s Declan McCullagh on what Real ID means to you (short version, getting your license renewed becomes a multi-day DMV odyssey, or plan on never getting on a plane or into a Federal office ever again for anything. How quickly can you lay hands on 4 pieces of easily verified documentation of your name, birthday, citizenship, gender, picture, and street address? What about your 16 year old kid/grandkid?). If that is not enough, here’s what the ACLU has to say. The bit about the Homeland Security Secretary having the authority to ignore any laws he doesn’t like to secure the border is confirmed here by the Washington Post. The whole thing may even be a violation of international law. Of course you should feel free to read the actual text of the legislation.

But none of this answers the question of what to do now. I propose a three-front assault:

Contact your Representative and Senator. They passed this thing, and they can pass a bill that cancels it. Remind them of that whole getting re-elected thing.

Support the groups that are leading the legal fight against it. The required changes in ID rules need to be in place by 2008. There is still hope, and plenty of people fighting this thing. Give money, give time, write letters, write your local newspaper, blog.

Apply heat to State officials. State officials already don’t like this thing. It’s expensive to implement, imposes not a huge but rather a freaking huge bureaucracy, will multiply the amount of time certain basic state services take to deliver, and if that weren’t enough will decrease public safety. How? Remember that the original purpose of a drivers license is to say you can drive? Because drivers licenses will be harder to get, more people will drive without them — perhaps badly, definitely without insurance. Go ahead and use a multi-pronged approach and write your state representatives, senator, and governor. Contact information is easily googled.

Carry on. Nobody can fight for your rights better than you can.

It seems like every day there is something new to be outraged about. It’s very tiring, trying to keep track of all the things that are just wrong, let alone trying to do something about it. The scandal of the day is greeted by many people with a sigh, followed by “Well, that figures. Tell me something else.” Another obstacle is set in the path of Getting Stuff Done, let alone Getting Ahead and our inner cynic just says to keep going. We are desensitizing to the various manufactured problems.

I call this condition “outrage fatigue.”

This administration has already given us a Medicare Drug Benefit that has caused the price of medicine to go up and provides corporate welfare to a select group of wealthy, profitable corporations. They have given us a bankruptcy “reform” that makes it harder for ordinary people to get on with their lives, oh, and provides corporate welfare to a select group of wealthy, profitable corporations. They would like to give us a Social Security “Reform” that will gut the system, slash benefits, and provide corporate “opportunities” to a select group of wealthy, profitable corporations. And even now the President is getting ready to unveil an energy proposal that, while he admits it won’t reduce the price of gasoline (no, he has to go begging foreign princes for that), won’t increase efficiency (despite the fact that increased CAFE standards would save more oil than would ever come out of ANWR), but it will provide corporate welfare to some of the most wealthy, profitable corporations on earth.

President Bush has nominated — and gotten approved — an Attorney General who called the Geneva Conventions “quaint” and a Secretary of State who may or may not have “respect for the truth.” He did not manage to get an easily bought adulterer who hires illegal aliens as the Secretary of Homeland Security. As for making a bully who thinks the UN does not exist our Ambassador to the UN, the Committee is still out on that one. And remember, folks, even though a Republican is the one who stood up and said no, it’s the Democrats fault.

And this brings me to Justice Sunday and the Nuclear Option — oh wait, somebody did a poll and decided that people don’t like the term “nuclear option,” so we should use “Constitutional Option” (even though the Constitution has nothing to do with it) and blame the Democrats for coining the term “nuclear option” (even though Republican Senator Trent Lott came up with it).

For the benefit of those who are unfamiliar with this brouhaha, here is the short version. President Bush nominated a bunch of judges last year. Ten of them were rejected for a variety of reasons, including not having a license to practice law, being bought and paid for by special interests, or just plain being nutcases. Here’s one that claims “that people of faith were embroiled in a ‘war’ against secular humanists who threatened to divorce America from its religious roots….” I’ll get back to that attitude in a minute, but let me finish the story. So President Bush resubmitted 7 of these people as nominees, and they are having a tough time. The Democrats are threatening a filibuster — keep talking and talking until somebody is willing to take an idea off the table just to make it stop. That seems harsh, but it is a way to protect us from majority whim. Senate Majority Leader “Dr.” Bill Frist, who famously diagnosed Terri Schaivo based on a videotape, is now threatening to take away the right to filibuster and force “a straight up or down vote” on these nominees. In support of this, he staged an event last weekend called “Justice Sunday” wherein a taped message was run at a variety of churches, with the idea that Christians would support this erosion of minority rights. This is being supported by megatelevangelist James Dobson.

They want to make this into an Us-Against-Them Christianity-Vs-Evil thing, when it is really about things like competence. It is insulting to you, insulting to me, insulting to the Lord that their Churches represent. How dare these people be outraged about judicial nominees and not outraged that a gay male prostitute had seemingly limitless access to the White House. How dare they forget that Article VI Clause 3 of the Constitution says “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” How dare they forget how the Pilgrims and many other groups of people left their homelands to practice their religions without Government interference. How dare they forget that we have tried theocracy on this continent, and found it lacking.

Oh, and how dare the churches that ran this message forget the obligations inherent to their tax-exempt status.

We can’t have any of that reading on an airplane!

Apparently there is at least one TSA agent who believes there is a limit to the number of books you can bring on an airplane. (Thanks to BoingBoing) Inasmuch as these screeners have the authority to make their own judgments about what might be prohibited items, he is right because he says so. But in what way is it potentially “dangerous” to have more than two books in your carry-on? How could you use a third or fourth book as a weapon?

And what exactly is to stop anybody from buying as many books as they can carry at the newsstand on the other side of the security checkpoint?

Seriously, most people are not going to begin a vacation looking to finish out a dozen books. But what about traveling salespeople, who must carry catalogs and literature about their products? He can’t check that because he has to keep track of it; he has to know where it is and that it will really arrive at his destination. What about people returning from conventions or other events where they receive or even buy books and book-like materials? Sure would be a pain to pick up the latest edition of, oh I don’t know, “Procedures for Primary Care Physicians” at the big AMA convention only to have it confiscated by the TSA. What about students looking to catch up on some studying when they go home for Spring Break? And how do they define a book?

I think most of us would be a little more tolerant of this type of behavior if the TSA were doing a good job, but they aren’t. Even conservatives are unimpressed. The British press reports “Gaping holes” in US Security, including but not limited to thousands of unauthorized airport workers (dozens of whom were illegal aliens), ignored risks at smaller airports, airport workers who cause security breaches, and a soon to be missed deadline for baggage screening.

Nope, we are too busy worrying about how many books you have in your bag.

In closing, kudos to Howard Dean for standing up and saying what most Americans think: “The issue is: Are we going to live in a theocracy where the highest powers tell us what to do? Or are we going to be allowed to consult our own high powers when we make very difficult decisions?”

It would have been easy to miss this news item today. The United States military has freed 2 Iraqi women, a 60 year old and her adult daughter. A Lt. Col. Clifford Kent denies that they were hostages intended to force family members to turn themselves in. Please pay no attention the note left in the family home reading “Be a man Muhammad Mukhlif and give yourself up and then we will release your sisters. Otherwise they will spend a long time in detention.” Also please pay no attention to the phone number on the note that, when a Reuter’s reporter dialed it, was answered by American soldiers. Kent added that Americans don’t take hostages or “blackmail” people into surrendering. Bull! American forces have been doing that kind of nonsense for 2 years, and it’s still an outrage. Amnesty International points out that such tactics are against international law.

So the next time there are new casualties in Iraq, the next time there is news of an insurgent attack, the next time you are told they “hate us for our freedoms” or the freedoms we are supposedly bringing the region, remember this. This story is not likely to be an isolated incident. Maybe it isn’t our freedoms they hate after all.

Don’t get me wrong, there is some good news coming out of Iraq — including getting a new President — but that is despite American actions, not because of them.