Monthly Archives: November 2010

UPDATE III: TSA: Home Grown Terrorism (& Cretinism)/It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp

Affirmative Action, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Israel, Propaganda, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Rights, Terrorism

The following is from my new column, “TSA: Home Grown Terrorism (& Cretinism),” now on WND.COM:

“… In the words of a horrified Israeli aviation security expert, speaking to a Fox News crew: ‘You cannot allow the security personnel to see, and show the entire world, images of naked bodies of women and men!’ Amid ongoing American insanity, this laconic Israeli, Isaac Yeffet, has been making the rounds on CNN, PBS, Fox News—has been doing so for a decade, at least.

Yeffet is a former member of the Israeli Secret Service, and was once in charge of security for El Al. Almost a year has past since Fox News probed him for his opinion about the ‘full body scanners.’ Nearly ten years have gone by since the man testified before an equally idiotic Congress.

No other western country is a bigger target for terrorists than Israel. Yet no other nation runs a better (largely privatized), less invasive, smarter, security system, whose able agents simply talk to travelers. These profilers understand that 99.9 percent of fliers are ‘bona fide’ (Yeffet’s favored bon mot). ‘Shoes aren’t removed, passengers aren’t body scanned, and there are no pat downs,’ confirms the New York Times. A ‘hand search’ is seldom conducted, and only with probable cause.

Fox News wanted tough answers; Yeffet gave them smart ones. In countless news interviews over the years, Yeffet has implied that there is no substitute for intelligence—intelligence as in smarts; as in that dreaded G Factor. (No, Cosmo Magazine readers, that’s not the same as the G Spot.) …”

The complete column is “TSA: Home Grown Terrorism (& Cretinism).” Read the rest on WND.COM.

UPDATE I (Nov. 19): This country follows a mushy-headed maxim whereby to be a victim (of crime, terrorism, one’s own stupidity) is to be automatically conferred with oracular wisdom. This nonsense has been applied to any relative of those murdered on 9/11.

Two such Delphic creatures have praised the TSA home-grown terrorism and quipped that it would be far more productive to go long with the probe and grope routines.

I give you “Mary and Frank Fetchet, whose son, Bradley James Fetchet, was killed on Sept. 11. [They] have also issued a statement in support of the new measures, citing the failed Christmas Day plot last December as a reminder that ‘comprehensive security measures’ are still needed.”

Mary Fetchet appeared on FoxNews this morning, with a member of the (honey) Blond Squad, who herself quipped that news people are featuring a small noisy bunch of travelers which is in a minority.

Another believer is Alice Hoagland. The fact that her son was killed in the Twin Towers gives her the ostensible authority to recommend the inflicted rogering and radiating routines.

UPDATE II: In the footage of the agents feeling up every day Americans the mug of the offender is always concealed. Why? Isn’t it the victim who should remain anon? Even the people broadcasting these assaults on flying America have their head screwed on like Linda Blair’s in the Exorcist.

And it’s so imbecilic. They’re going thorough the motions knowing full-well that they’ll never meet a terrorist; 99.99999% of the individuals they violate are “bona fide.”

UPDATE III (Nov. 20): I call the liberal neocon Judy Miller Mrs. Chalabi. She was one of the “presstitutes” who enabled the invasion of Iraq from her perch at the New York Times. She’s no journalist. She’s a media person. Big difference.

During her tenure at the Gray Lady, promoting Bush’s war, Judy made sure to exclude all analysis (including from highly regarded experts) that didn’t comport with the Bush “thesis” about Iraq. Her preferred sources of information were corrupt parties like Egypt, Jordan, ex-KGB man Vladimir Putin, and Ahmad Chalabi, the man who fed a willing administration phony intel on Iraq so as to fire-up the War Party.

Today, on Fox News Watch, Judy the non-journalist, said that the American media had not covered the Israeli airports security methods.

Nothing mainstream media write is original. We guerrilla journalists and writers are always ahead of the pack, but Ms. Miller, like her colleagues, does not consider that a story/angle has been covered in earnest until she or her colleagues have stumbled upon it.

Imagine: Judith Chalabi being a respected panelist on a program about media bias.

On the same stage, Kirsten Powers, a liberal member of the Fox News Blond Squad, expressed her satisfaction with the porn protocol at the airports, and wept in sympathy for TSA workers. Yeah, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp.”

THE TSA THEME SONG:

On Parrot Power & Other “Deep Technical Skills”

English, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Labor, Outsourcing, Parrots, Politics

I just had to correct the first error I found in John Derbyshire’s terrific book, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism. (Read it!)

It’s an analogy that occurs on page 108: “Parrot-brained politicians.”

As you know, the author of the much-reviled columns, “In Defense of Michael Vick,” Parts One and Two, loves parrots and has two (T. Cup and Oscar-Wood). Parrots are enchanting, highly intelligent creatures.

Besides, can any politician problem-solve as this magic macaw does? Tan’s Japanese admirers are enthralled. As well they should be. Watch:

Jokes aside, Derb has a list of “deep technical skills” required to power a modern economy (p. 112). Other than the “structural engineer,” whom you would hope has a considerable facility with theory/math too (if those bridges are to stand), I don’t see how trades such as “TV studio lighting,” or “orthodontistry” (as opposed dentistry), horticulture, aircraft maintenance, crane operating, or bond trading quite qualify as “deep technical skills.”

(Where do electrical engineers and computer scientists fall? These are the people who supply the dumb, difficult and dispensable young—the twittering twits—with the playthings that keep their brainwaves from flatlining.)

A minor query, a magnificent book. I guess I was looking for an excuse to chat about and recommend We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism.

UPDATE II: Ron To The Rescue (TSA Animals Animated)

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Ron Paul, Technology, Terrorism

(Rep.) Ron Paul does the right thing with characteristic brevity. As WND.COM reports, Paul’s H.R. 6416 “is just two sentences long, stating:

No law of the United States shall be construed to confer any immunity for a federal employee or agency or any individual or entity that receives federal funds, who subjects an individual to any physical contact (including contact with any clothing the individual is wearing), X-rays, or millimeter waves, or aids in the creation of or views a representation of any part of a individual’s body covered by clothing as a condition for such individual to be in an airport or to fly in an aircraft. The preceding sentence shall apply even if the individual or the individual’s parent, guardian, or any other individual gives consent.

“‘We have seen the videos of terrified children being grabbed and probed by airport screeners. We have read the stories of Americans being subjected to humiliating body imaging machines and/or forced to have the most intimate parts of their bodies poked and fondled,’ Paul said.”

“‘This TSA version of our rights looks more like the ‘rights’ granted in the old Soviet Constitutions, where freedoms were granted to Soviet citizens – right up to the moment the state decided to remove those freedoms.'”

MORE.

UPDATED I: TSA Animals Animated.

UPDATE II (Nov. 18): I agree with Myron that the Paul bill must provide for probable cause searches, as the Israelis do. More in my WND column, tonight. Does Paul exclude those provisions? I would have preferred a reiteration of the Fourth Amendment.

"Libertarians On The Shrink's Couch"

Intellectualism, Intelligence, libertarianism, Morality, Objectivism, Reason

“A team of social psychologists,” reports Gene Healy, “including the University of Virginia’s Jonathan Haidt, provides some of the most detailed answers yet, putting libertarians on the couch in a new study, ‘Understanding Libertarian Morality.'”

“For several years now, at YourMorals.org, they’ve let self-described liberals, conservatives, and libertarians speak for themselves, by voluntarily taking a battery of psychological tests measuring personality characteristics, cognitive style, and moral values. Along the way, they’ve compiled the ‘largest dataset of psychological measures ever compiled on libertarians’ — with more than 10,000 respondents.”

“Libertarians tend to be dispassionate and cerebral, less likely to moralize based on gut reactions like disgust (one source, the authors suggest, of our disagreement with conservatives on social issues).

“‘We found strong support,’ they write, for the proposition that libertarians ‘will rely upon reason more — and emotion less — than will either liberals or conservatives.’ Blubbery Clintonian empathy isn’t our bag, baby; we don’t ‘feel your pain.’ Where ‘liberals have the most ‘feminine’ cognitive style … libertarians have the most ‘masculine.’ And where others often ‘rely on peripheral cues, such as how attractive or credible a speaker is,’ when formulating opinions, libertarians are more likely to pay ‘close attention to relevant arguments.'”

[SNIP]

I prefer to put it a little differently, as I did in an interview with Everyman: A Men’s Journal:

“When people are rational, they observe reality as it is, and are more likely to be concerned with justice and avoid misplacing compassion. So the starting point is, unavoidably, a return to reason. … I certainly understand your concern and agree with you that the arguments we’ve made in favor of justice for men are less intuitive and less visceral than the arguments feminists make. But since we know our more complex arguments are the right ones, we have the answer: to make people fairer, kinder, and more compassionate, one has to first make them able to think and reason. In the introduction to F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, economist Milton Friedman underscores this point: ‘The argument for collectivism is simple if false; it is an immediate emotional argument. The argument for individualism is subtle and sophisticated; it is an indirect rational argument.”

“Sure, making people just isn’t easy. But it certainly won’t work if you aim for the gut instead of the gray matter. As usual, Oscar Wilde said it best in one of his plays: ‘She thought that because he was stupid he would be kindly, when of course, kindliness requires imagination and intellect.'”