New Screening policies won’t stop terrorist attacks and are the wrong path to security.

When I was in my late teens/early twenties and living in Britain, I remember being on the subway or train platforms in London and you couldn’t find a garbage can anywhere. They were removed because the IRA used to put explosive devices in them. I didn’t think too much about why they did that, I just knew that they were terrorists and that in Northern Ireland, Catholics and Protestants just did not get along.

I have come a long way since that time and when the attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon took place on September 11th 2001, I remember saying to some of my co-workers and friends that the first question we have to ask ourselves is “What on earth is our government doing abroad that would lead people to do this, or more importantly, lead people to justify someone doing this?” I should have asked this back then with regard to the British government’s policy, and history in Ireland although I obviously did later.

The events of 911 should have been a wake up call for us as American workers. It was time to recognize that we cannot leave the governing of society to those that govern it. That we cannot remain apolitical, that we cannot read only the sports page or concern ourselves solely with the highly censored and biased US mass media. It was time not to blindly follow the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the imbecile Bush and their class and lash out like a wounded tiger. It was time to recognize that the politicians of the two capitalist parties in Congress have forfeited any right to govern and we have to step forward.

Instead, the policies of repression, wars, invasions and slaughter abroad, and increased attacks on wages, working conditions and our democratic rights at home have won out. The US ruling class used 911 to intensify their invasions of other countries for control of their resources and the fear of terrorists to assault our civil liberties. Iraq was invaded even though this war torn country had nothing to do with 911. In the aftermath of the attacks, it was hard for those of us that called for a different approach. I had no success in my Union where I had a decent reputation and some allies. The mood was a revengeful one amid all the talk of war and the need to be united with the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George Bush and the capitalist class as a whole. Here we are nine years later and the so-called war on terror is still raging. In fact, it will never end. Terrorism is a tactic and you can’t wage war on a tactic.

The new screening procedures at airports instituted to “protect” us from terrorists have caused a furor. Many Americans are up in arms about them, terrorists or not. The new body scanners have been described as producing detailed three-dimensional images of individuals that “undress” the traveler. Security experts have described whole body scanners as the equivalent of “a physically invasive strip-search.”,

Along with the full body scan is the more intrusive manual body search where passengers are selected for a thorough pat down, randomly or because something has shown up on the images collected by the body-scan machine. People are not happy and US passengers are preparing a mass protest against the 'intrusive' airport security. "If you touch my junk I'll have you arrested," said one passenger last week who decided not to fly rather than putting his "junk" in harms way.

Another passenger, a woman from Ohio, complained that her vagina was touched. The security employee, "went to the bottom of my legs, came up my inner thighs, touched my genital areas on both sides," she says, adding that, "Security is obviously everybody's number one priority, but I don't think we need to be sexually violating our own citizens."




Note: at the end of this post are some comments from the taker of this video clip and the subsequent harassment by security.

An Internet campaign is urging people to opt out of the full body scanners and insist on pat downs on Wednesday. Thanksgiving is the busiest day of the year for air travel in the US. “TSA does not have the manpower to stick their hands in the pants of everyone coming through there." Says James Babb a co-founder of one of the groups called “Won't Fly”

Whenever they institute emergency measures to deal with “terrorists” we forget that these laws are always used against anyone who is a threat, Union activists, workers on strike, protesters, and the taker of this video for example. Disrupting the economy is now officially an act of terrorism.

Increased repression, both abroad and at home, is the response of those whose actions have brought this situation upon us. The attacks on US interests including civilians have their roots in US foreign policy. They can be easily halted without the need for body scans and strip searches. It is good to protest these invasive measures but we must start to think about what this so-called War on Terrorism is really about.  Here are a few suggestions we should think about:

*End the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; bring the troops home.
*Cease the building of bases throughout the world
*Condemn rather than support the Israeli regime’s theft of Palestinian land and destruction of their homes------stop funding to Israel and demand the dismantling of the illegal settlements and tear down the wall.
*Cease the bombing of Pakistan with unmanned drones and against the wishes of the Pakistani people.
* End arms supplies to Saudi Arabia and Egypt
*Transfer all military aid to these countries to aid for schools, infrastructure and medicine

These are just a few suggestions that would have a powerful effect on how people around the world perceive us and would undermine support among the population for what the US government refers to as terrorist groups and activity. US foreign policy as it is, is the best recruiting tool or these groups.

Just a thought.


Here is the statement from the maker of that video that I pulled off the internet.
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.

******* THIS VIDEO OCCURRED AT SALT LAKE CITY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT ON NOVEMBER 19TH AT AROUND THE TIME OF 12:00 PM **********

***Insertion of what happened after the video (full story)****

After I finished videotaping the incident I went through the check point myself. I collected my things and went over to talk to the father and son. Before I could get to them a man in a black suit who had been talking with the other TSA officials approached me. He asked to speak to me and I obliged, wondering what was to come. He then proceeded to interrogate me about why I was videotaping the "procedures of the TSA". I told him that I had never seen such practices before on a young child and decided to record it. The man being frustrated at this point demanded to know my plans with the video, of which I didn't respond. Repeatedly he asked me to delete the video, hoping his mere presence could intimidate me to obey, but I refused. By this point it became obvious that he felt TSA had done something wrong and that I caught it on tape. After the interview, I left for my gate. I called my brother who told me I should put the tape on YouTube because this had been a recent hot topic in the news.
My gate was a long way off, but about 15 minutes after arriving 2 TSA agents came and sat 15 feet or so away from me. I stood up and moved so that they were in front of me and then took a picture. A 3rd and then a 4th agent came and sat down with the others. They would occasionally glance at me and talk on their walkie-talkies. I don't know why they were there or if it was a huge coincidence but they stayed for 30-45 minutes and left just before I boarded the plan. Interesting to say the least, intimidating? Maybe a little...