The TSA terrorist who molested me looked nothing like this. But even if she had, she ought to have been cuffed for running her giant digits on my chest and between my legs. My thanks to BAB readers Michael Marks and wife for snapping and sending this along. In impetus, the image reminds me of this repulsive Lindt ad. I went cold turkey after viewing the lighthearted look Lindt took at two TSA agents looting and lusting with impunity.
Lenore Zimmerman is defiant and articulate. Would that individuals like her replaced the Occupy Wall Street Idiocracy. The “85-year-old Long Island grandmother” is the latest victim of the homegrown terrorists of the TSA. She might be tiny and fragile, but unlike so many other TSA “victims,” Lenore is not weepy or weak:
Lenore … says she was on her way to a 1 p.m. flight to Fort Lauderdale when security whisked her to a private room and took off her clothes.
“I walk with a walker — I really look like a terrorist,” she said sarcastically. “I’m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.”
TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said a review of closed circuit TV footage from the airport shows “proper procedures were followed.”
But Zimmerman, whose hunched back puts her at 4-foot-11, said her ordeal began after her son, Bruce, drove her to the JetBlue terminal for the Florida flight. She lives in warm Coconut Creek during the winter.
She checked her bags, waited for a wheelchair and parted ways with her doting son — her only immediate relative.
When Zimmerman reached a security checkpoint, she asked if she could forgo the advanced image technology screening equipment, fearing it might interfere with her defibrillator.
She said she normally gets patted down. But this time, she says that two female agents escorted her to a private room and began to remove her clothes.
“I was outraged,” said Zimmerman, a retired receptionist.
As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she says, the metal bars banged against her leg and blood trickled from a gash.
“My sock was soaked with blood,” she said. “I was bleeding like a pig.”
She says the TSA agents showed no sympathy, instead pulling down her pants and asking her to raise her arms.
These TSA legalized assaults happen daily in police state USA. The triumphant Republican majority in Congress claims to have a new-found affinity for freedom. If this were so, their first order of business would have been to stop the molestation en masse at the country’s airports. So far nothing has been done about the ongoing violations of the individual’s constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches without probable cause.
Face it, the Republican Party’s fidelity is to the security state, not to liberty.
Economy, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Middle East, Technology, Terrorism
The crazies are threatening it on the north (Lebanon & Syria), the south (the lovely Egyptian revolutionaries), and the east (the Palestinian Authority, Jordan and beyond), but, as the US and most of Europe decline, Israel’s economy flourishes. Here are Israel’s fiscal fundamentals, courtesy of Bloomberg.com:
• GDP growth of 4.8 percent this year
• A raised credit rating of A+
• Very low unemployment
• “60 companies traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market, the most of any nation outside North America after China.”
• “The largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.”
• A ranking of “third in terms of projected growth this year among MSCI’s list of 24 developed economies, after 6 percent for Hong Kong and 5.3 percent for Singapore, according to the IMF.”
• “Israel’s exports are high-added value exports like informatics and technology”: This means the stuff the Israelis make adds real value and jobs, unlike Obama’s state-manufactured jobs, which are a result of moving money around.
SADLY, that thing we in the US celebrate and anticipate—the Arab spring—threatens commence, innovation and economic prosperity in the region’s most productive oasis. Some “spring” …
And I thought the Salafis were the more mystical and less fractious among Muslims. Our friend, Nebojsa Malic, sets the record straight about the latest events in Serbia:
Mevlid Jasarevic, age 23, is a follower of the Salafi sect of Islam. This afternoon he opened fire on the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Jasarevic was subsequently shot and reportedly killed.
Because Jasarevic is from Novi Pazar, a town in Serbia, odds are the mainstream Western media will describe this as a “Serbian attack”, or at least identify him as “Serbian citizen.” This would be horribly misleading, of course, but that hasn’t stopped them before.
Here are some things to keep in mind here, before the spin distorts them:
* Salafi missionaries came to Bosnia during the war, with tacit approval and even assistance of the U.S., to get the “wayward” Bosnian Muslims in line and wage jihad against the Serb and Croat “infidels.”
* There are 150,000 or so Muslims in the Raska region of southwestern Serbia (which they call “Sanjak”, a term going back to Ottoman days). Their religious leader, mufti Muamer Zukorlic, was appointed by the top Islamic cleric of Bosnia and has been stirring up trouble and preaching violence and hate for several years. In this, he enjoys the support of many foreign governments (“Friends of Sanjak”), including the U.S.
* Jasarevic may technically be a citizen of Serbia, but he is wanted there on charges of terrorism. He left Serbia last year, and settled in the Salafi commune of Gornja Maoca in northern Bosnia. Until it was ethnically cleansed during the Bosnian War, it used to be a Serb village called Karavlasi.
In addition to terrorizing any Christians (Serbs or Croats) they may come across, the Salafi frequently harass ordinary Bosnian Muslims, who by and large follow the Hanafi school of Islam. The Hanafi approach accepts local customs and is what made coexistence with Christians in the past possible in the first place. Salafists dismiss this as heresy and preach absolute intolerance of any who do not follow their ways.
Anyway, just watch: Jasarevic will be described as a lone lunatic, his motives will be “unknown”, and there will be no mention of jihad or Islamic terrorism. The notion that the Salafists in Bosnia may be nurturing terrorists who threaten American lives runs counter to the mainstream narrative of innocent Muslims being victims of evil Serbs, and is therefore thoughtcrime.
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Nebojsa Malic has been the Balkans columnist for Antiwar.com since 2000, and blogs at grayfalcon.blogspot.com. This editorial is exclusive to Barely A Blog.