Mail 318 July 12 - 18, 2004 (original) (raw)
Thursday, July 15, 2004
The following subject is distasteful, and you may want to skip past it.
Over in another forum, in a discussion of AIDS in Africa I asked:
Am I deceived? My last information on female to male AIDS transmission was years ago, but at that time there was not one single unambiguous case. Male to female with normal sex would eventually give the woman AIDS, but female to male was a very low probability event.
Consequently, the way to not get AIDS (other than abstention or mechanical barriers) was to avoid being buggered whether you were male or female, and not to use soiled hypodermic needles, which is a pretty bad practice to begin with and surely conveys no pleasures. Thus the chances of a person of normal intelligence with reasonable control over impulses for getting AIDS was low.
Is this wrong? Is there something about Africans that makes it easier to get AIDS in normal sex with women? Is it something about African women I don't know?
And have things changed in the United States? I am not trying to be cute here: I just don't know. I do know that a decade ago I did a fair amount of due diligence on this matter and concluded that if you don't do drugs and don't get buggered, a male rake -- what was called a gay blade in my youth -- is more likely to be killed by a protective father (whether or not he becomes a statue) than to get AIDS.
I got a number of answers, none of which were terribly satisfactory because they involved various practices that are themselves voluntary: that is, it may be unrealistic to expect monogamy and abstinence, or even the use of condoms in all cases, but surely under the threat of death one is not required to practice "dry sex" and various other acts that may or may not enhance pleasure, but are certainly dangerous.
In the discussion came the following pair of comments:
>It is my understanding that the risk of female-to-male transmission is
>a lot higher in Africa. But I've yet to see any measures male versus
>female rates of infection. We'd expect to see higher female rates than
>male rates if most HIV transmission was happening heterosexually in
>Africa even though men can get it from women.
> >One explanation advanced for higher rates of female to male
>transmission is that the males are more likely to have open sores from other STDs.
> >Another explanation is that heterosexuals in Africa have more sexual
>partners.
> >I'd be curious to hear a knowledgeable non-P.C. analysis of what is
>known about African HIV transmission.
And the reply
Ten or fifteen years ago, Phillip Adams, one of Australia's best known columnists and broadcasters (former evangelical, one-time youthful Communist, advertising tycoon, still left - Australia's Mike Moore, physically, and in what he is willing to say about "Shrub" as he calls George W., but personally agreeable - so, in short, on this subject without obvious bias) wrote very assertively, on probably good expert authority, that heterosexual anal sex was common in sub-Saharan Africa as a contraceptive method. He was arguing strongly against the PC attempts to aim expensive government advertising as much at heterosexuals as at homosexuals, as though Australian heteros needed to be frightened out of their socks as it was clear gays needed to be. That is the last I have heard or read of the matter but I suspect that it does indeed identify an additional factor in the way AIDS has spread in Africa. (I wonder whether there is a similar problem with transexual prostitutes in South and South East Asia.)
I have just emailed to Phillip for an update so I hope to be able to pass it on.
James
Which is where matters stand now. It seems to me an important question. In Thailand they are concerned about 3% infection rates, while in Uganda there is dancing in the streets because the rate is almost down to 5%.
What is going on here? Is there a non-PC analysis of the vectoring mechanisms? Or is the entire subject simply part of that body of the scientifically unspeakable? We all know what we can't say and who we can't say it about. Is inquiry into this part of that package?
Subject: AIDS issue
Jerry,
Concerning the AIDS issue posted today on your website, I�m in a position to give a bit of insight. I�ve been to Uganda several times in the past two years on several projects, and the most recent project I�ve been working on is the distribution of Anti-Retroviral drugs to AIDS infected individuals in that country. I�m leaving on the 25th for Uganda and Botswana (another hard hit nation re: AIDS). My CEO is leaving next week for Vietnam to enter discussions with Medical professionals and the U.S. Ambassador there.
The biggest issue causing the spread of AIDS in Uganda is indiscriminate and unprotected sex. Men in Uganda tend to �sleep around� quite a bit, married or not. It was very much accepted until recently, and folks there are beginning to frown on the practice, but it still a very common thing for a man to support multiple lovers. In fact, many young women work their way through college this way. Another problem in the more remote areas is the �Traditional Healer� practice of advising infected males to sleep with a young virgin in the belief that it will cure them. All it does, of course, is infect them too. Open sores are a way of life in Uganda due to the hard life people have, and transmission can be done this way, according to advice I have received from medical professionals I have spoken to, based on my concerns of getting in a wreck in Uganda and having AIDS be transmitted from blood from someone else involved in the accident. It seems this is a valid concern (especially when you have an opportunity to experience the bedlam that is automobile traffic in Kampala city, or the reckless game of Russian Roulette you play on the highways throughout the country, especially at night). My understanding is thhe one issue with transmitting via open wounds is that it takes quite a bit of blood to transmit it this way, as long as the wound is bleeding out, as it will be difficult for the transmission to take place.
There are however, many, many cases of the husband coming home with the disease and infecting his wife. I�ve met many of these women during installation and testing of the ARv tracking systems. Most of them have just accepted it, a few are angry (very few), others are just too sick to care. I believe this is the most common occurrence of the transmission of AIDS in that country. There is also the issue of mothers transmitting to their children, although a vaccine has been developed (through research in Uganda) that if administered in a very short time near birth, the child has a very good chance of not getting the disease.
There are billboards all over promoting the use of condoms, people hand out free condoms at the weekend dances, and there are boxes in many public or restaurant �water closets� that have condoms for free.
The Ministry of Health in Uganda has made great strides through information campaigns in print and radio media (there is little in the was of television in Uganda, and it is almost all from outside the borders on satellite TV, and quite recently, cable in Kampala. I work closely with people from the Ministry and they are very committed to battling AIDS in any and every way they can.
Tracy
I thoroughly understand how the husband comes home and infects the wife. It happens here also.
But how did the husband get it in the first place?
In the US there is still no well documented case of female to male AIDS transmission (at least none I know of; my due diligence in this is a couple of years old). In every case I ever looked at there is a probability of dirty needles or that the man got buggered and did not want to admit that so claimed to have got it from women.
In the US if you don't get buggered and you don't use dirty needles you don't get AIDS, and it don't matter if you have normal intercourse with a different infected woman every night: you don't get AIDS, or so it would appear, and given the politically correct people trying to make AIDS the only disease worth putting money into I would think if female to male transmission were easy and demonstrable we would see lots of documented cases. If there are such I would like to be shown that.
But we see NONE that I know of. Now I could be deceived. But the last time I looked, in the US you don't get AIDS if you don't get bad blood (Asimov's method of getting AIDS: bad transfusion) or you don't share needles, or you don't get buggered.
Has that changed in the US??? If not, then why is Africa different?
Subject: female to male AIDS xmission
Dr. P.,
I read an article a few months ago which stated that some study had discovered female to male AIDS transmission was almost negligible in circumcised males, but was much, much higher in uncircumcised males, presumably due to something in the foreskin: I speculate, is that skin more "open pored?" Is the virus harboured in its folds? Does the foreskin develop damage (in "dry sex") which makes it more likely to transfer the virus? I do not know the answer to any of these questions but I do recall the above study, for what it's worth. (Those who examined the results suggested that circumcision of all males might be the way to control the transmission of the disease. I haven't seen any other articles on this subject.)
-P.
My friend Priscilla Reining (one place I found her on the web http://www.circumstitions.com/HIV-valley.html ) has compiled a list of tribes in Africa and compared AIDS rates of those who practice circumcision and those who don't, and the AIDS rate is much lower in those who circumcise. I had nearly forgotten that and I shouldn't have, since it's probably one part of the explanation. The web site I show above seems devoted to proving she's nuts, or perhaps it was so boring I didn't read far enough; but I assure you she's a very careful anthropologist.
Here is a better presentation of her views: http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/2754/aids071900.htm
====================
Dr Pournelle,
AIDS in Africa
My cousin, who is a consultant gynaecologist, used to practice in South Africa until quite recently.
He puts the very high incidence of HIV/AIDS in southern Africa down to the traditional practice there of employing anal intercourse as a sort of poor man�s contraception. The danger is exacerbated by more traditional sexual diseases being endemic among the population, as these diseases tend to cause lesions on the sexual organ that make HIV transmission very much easier�and into the bargain , diseases such as syphilis or gonorrhea weaken the body�s resistance generally.
I hope that is helpful,
Jim Mangles
====================
Dr Pournelle,
Talking of Jacobins...
There is a strange parallel between the French Revolution with its Jacobins and Girondins, and the Russian Revolution with its Bolshevists and
Mensheviks. Both revolutions evolved (Can you talk of revolutions evolving?) through reigns of terror into dictatorships, of Napoleon on the one hand, Lenin and Stalin on the other.
Many, I suspect the vast majority, of revolutions turn out in the end to deliver something worse than that which they overthrew. The question is why this was not so for the American Revolution?
I would suggest the following:-
This was not really a revolution at all but a war of independence, and the two are quite different in many ways. The leading American revolutionaries were not really revolutionaries of the kind found later in France and Russia; all they had sought was to preserve their �rights as Englishmen� but in the end concluded it was necessary to cast off England to achieve these.
I would be curious to learn your thoughts on this.
Jim Mangles
Crane Brinton's Anatomy of Revolution postulates something similar. The short answer is that the Colonists wanted "the rights of free Englishmen", and their leaders having read about the history of the English Revolution of 1648 and the Commonwealth, wanted little to do with the full monty; your observation is entirely correct.
There are at least a thousand books on why the American experiment succeeded when so many failed. Alas, I think those who planned the Iraqi War have not read a single one of them.
And here is the end of the Wilson matter, I think:
Subject: La Plame redux . . .
http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak15.html
--- Roland Dobbins
One less stick to beat Bush with...
And a quick follow-on to the 9/11 commission report, I refer you back to http://debka.com/article.php?aid=780 "....DEBKAfile went back to its most reliable intelligence sources in the US and the Middle East, some of whom were actively involved in the subject before and during the Iraq war. They all stuck to their guns. As they have consistently informed DEBKAfile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly , Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons programs were present on the eve of the American-led invasion and quantities of forbidden materials were spirited out to Syria. Whatever Dr. Kay may choose to say now, at least one of these sources knows at first hand that the former ISG director received dates, types of vehicles and destinations covering the transfers of Iraqi WMD to Syria. "
My take is debka.com, although marching to its own drummer, is right more often than not. If there is truth to these allegations, why are we tip-toeing around the question?
Whether or not these banned materials were still in Iraq is moot. Saddam did have them. He did use them, early and often. He deliberately cultivated the impression that he still had them and would use them again. And that is no different than if I hold up a liquor store with a plastic squirt gun painted to look like an Uzi and the cops shoot me. My fault, not the cops.
Should the US have played the role of cop? Certainly no one else was going to.
Did the appeasement of Hitler in the Munich Pact bring peace? Letting Saddam continue to play his little brinksmanship games wasn't going to make the middle east any safer either.
Now, comparing Saddam and Hitler is not fair. Saddam modeled himself on an even more ferocious dictator of the times, good ol' Joseph Stalin.
Cheers!
Greg H
Well, I agree no one else was going to do it, but I don't think we should have either; but the vituperation heaped on Bush now is undeserved. If the reasons he gave for going to war were valid, they were valid: that is, the intelligence we had was about as good as we would get, and not many disputed much of what was said with the exception of the Prague meeting. I didn't think we should have gone in, but finding out that much of what we suspected was not true doesn't change anything.
=======================================
TSA FIDDLES:
The following is very long. It is from the Women's Wall Street Journal, and I strongly recommend you go there and look at the original article as a courtesy to them for printing it. http://www.womenswallstreet.com/ The subject matter is somewhat important:
Subject: Terror in the Skies, Again?
Greetings, sir. I fly frequently, and the following account is similar to several I've either been a part of or witnessed firsthand. I don't know the author, and I'm not familiar with the publication, but this rings true.
Thanks for providing a forum for this sort of information.
Tim Elliott
Terror in the Skies, Again? By Annie Jacobsen
A WWS Exclusive Article
Note from the editors: You are about to read an account of what happened during a domestic flight that one of our writers, Annie Jacobsen, took from Detroit to Los Angeles. The Womens Wall Street Editorial Team debated long and hard about how to handle this information and ultimately we decided it was something that should be shared. What does it have to do with finances? Nothing, and everything. Here is Annie's story.
On June 29, 2004, at 12:28 p.m., I flew on Northwest Airlines flight #327 from Detroit to Los Angeles with my husband and our young son. Also on our flight were 14 Middle Eastern men between the ages of approximately 20 and 50 years old. What I experienced during that flight has caused me to question whether the United States of America can realistically uphold the civil liberties of every individual, even non-citizens, and protect its citizens from terrorist threats.
On that Tuesday, our journey began uneventfully. Starting out that morning in Providence, Rhode Island, we went through security screening, flew to Detroit, and passed the time waiting for our connecting flight to Los Angeles by shopping at the airport stores and eating lunch at an airport diner. With no second security check required in Detroit we headed to our gate and waited for the pre-boarding announcement. Standing near us, also waiting to pre-board, was a group of six Middle Eastern men. They were carrying blue passports with Arabic writing. Two men wore tracksuits with Arabic writing across the back. Two carried musical instrument cases - thin, flat, 18 long. One wore a yellow T-shirt and held a McDonald's bag. And the sixth man had a bad leg -- he wore an orthopedic shoe and limped. When the pre-boarding announcement was made, we handed our tickets to the Northwest Airlines agent, and walked down the jetway with the group of men directly behind us.
My four-year-old son was determined to wheel his carry-on bag himself, so I turned to the men behind me and said, You go ahead, this could be awhile. No, you go ahead, one of the men replied. He smiled pleasantly and extended his arm for me to pass. He was young, maybe late 20's and had a goatee. I thanked him and we boarded the plan.
Once on the plane, we took our seats in coach (seats 17A, 17B and 17C). The man with the yellow shirt and the McDonald's bag sat across the aisle from us (in seat 17E). The pleasant man with the goatee sat a few rows back and across the aisle from us (in seat 21E). The rest of the men were seated throughout the plane, and several made their way to the back.
As we sat waiting for the plane to finish boarding, we noticed another large group of Middle Eastern men boarding. The first man wore a dark suit and sunglasses. He sat in first class in seat 1A, the seat second-closet to the cockpit door. The other seven men walked into the coach cabin. As aware Americans, my husband and I exchanged glances, and then continued to get comfortable. I noticed some of the other passengers paying attention to the situation as well. As boarding continued, we watched as, one by one, most of the Middle Eastern men made eye contact with each other. They continued to look at each other and nod, as if they were all in agreement about something. I could tell that my husband was beginning to feel anxious.
The take-off was uneventful. But once we were in the air and the seatbelt sign was turned off, the unusual activity began. The man in the yellow T-shirt got out of his seat and went to the lavatory at the front of coach -- taking his full McDonald's bag with him. When he came out of the lavatory he still had the McDonald's bag, but it was now almost empty. He walked down the aisle to the back of the plane, still holding the bag. When he passed two of the men sitting mid-cabin, he gave a thumbs-up sign. When he returned to his seat, he no longer had the McDonald's bag.
Then another man from the group stood up and took something from his carry-on in the overhead bin. It was about a foot long and was rolled in cloth. He headed toward the back of the cabin with the object. Five minutes later, several more of the Middle Eastern men began using the forward lavatory consecutively. In the back, several of the men stood up and used the back lavatory consecutively as well.
For the next hour, the men congregated in groups of two and three at the back of the plane for varying periods of time. Meanwhile, in the first class cabin, just a foot or so from the cockpit door, the man with the dark suit - still wearing sunglasses - was also standing. Not one of the flight crew members suggested that any of these men take their seats.
Watching all of this, my husband was now beyond anxious. I decided to try to reassure my husband (and maybe myself) by walking to the back bathroom. I knew the goateed-man I had exchanged friendly words with as we boarded the plane was seated only a few rows back, so I thought I would say hello to the man to get some reassurance that everything was fine. As I stood up and turned around, I glanced in his direction and we made eye contact. I threw out my friendliest remember-me-we-had-a-nice-exchange-just-a-short-time-ago smile. The man did not smile back. His face did not move. In fact, the cold, defiant look he gave me sent shivers down my spine.
When I returned to my seat I was unable to assure my husband that all was well. My husband immediately walked to the first class section to talk with the flight attendant. I might be overreacting, but I've been watching some really suspicious things... Before he could finish his statement, the flight attendant pulled him into the galley. In a quiet voice she explained that they were all concerned about what was going on. The captain was aware. The flight attendants were passing notes to each other. She said that there were people on board higher up than you and me watching the men. My husband returned to his seat and relayed this information to me. He was feeling slightly better. I was feeling much worse. We were now two hours into a four-in-a-half hour flight.
Approximately 10 minutes later, that same flight attendant came by with the drinks cart. She leaned over and quietly told my husband there were federal air marshals sitting all around us. She asked him not to tell anyone and explained that she could be in trouble for giving out that information. She then continued serving drinks.
About 20 minutes later the same flight attendant returned. Leaning over and whispering, she asked my husband to write a description of the yellow-shirted man sitting across from us. She explained it would look too suspicious if she wrote the information. She asked my husband to slip the note to her when he was done.
After seeing 14 Middle Eastern men board separately (six together, eight individually) and then act as a group, watching their unusual glances, observing their bizarre bathroom activities, watching them congregate in small groups, knowing that the flight attendants and the pilots were seriously concerned, and now knowing that federal air marshals were on board, I was officially terrified.. Before I'm labeled a racial profiler or -- worse yet -- a racist, let me add this. A month ago I traveled to India to research a magazine article I was writing. My husband and I flew on a jumbo jet carrying more than 300 Hindu and Muslim men and women on board. We traveled throughout the country and stayed in a Muslim village 10 miles outside Pakistan. I never once felt fearful. I never once felt unsafe. I never once had the feeling that anyone wanted to hurt me. This time was different.
Finally, the captain announced that the plane was cleared for landing. It had been four hours since we left Detroit. The fasten seat belt light came on and I could see downtown Los Angeles. The flight attendants made one final sweep of the cabin and strapped themselves in for landing. I began to relax. Home was in sight.
Suddenly, seven of the men stood up -- in unison -- and walked to the front and back lavatories. One by one, they went into the two lavatories, each spending about four minutes inside. Right in front of us, two men stood up against the emergency exit door, waiting for the lavatory to become available. The men spoke in Arabic among themselves and to the man in the yellow shirt sitting nearby. One of the men took his camera into the lavatory. Another took his cell phone. Again, no one approached the men. Not one of the flight attendants asked them to sit down. I watched as the man in the yellow shirt, still in his seat, reached inside his shirt and pulled out a small red book. He read a few pages, then put the book back inside his shirt. He pulled the book out again, read a page or two more, and put it back. He continued to do this several more times.
I looked around to see if any other passengers were watching. I immediately spotted a distraught couple seated two rows back. The woman was crying into the man's shoulder. He was holding her hand. I heard him say to her, You've got to calm down. Behind them sat the once pleasant-smiling, goatee-wearing man.
I grabbed my son, I held my husband's hand and, despite the fact that I am not a particularly religious person, I prayed. The last man came out of the bathroom, and as he passed the man in the yellow shirt he ran his forefinger across his neck and mouthed the word No.
The plane landed. My husband and I gathered our bags and quickly, very quickly, walked up the jetway. As we exited the jetway and entered the airport, we saw many, many men in dark suits. A few yards further out into the terminal, LAPD agents ran past us, heading for the gate. I have since learned that the representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the Federal Air Marshals (FAM), and the Transportation Security Association (TSA) met our plane as it landed. Several men -- who I presume were the federal air marshals on board -- hurried off the plane and directed the 14 men over to the side.
Knowing what we knew, and seeing what we'd seen, my husband and I decided to talk to the authorities. For several hours my husband and I were interrogated by the FBI. We gave sworn statement after sworn statement. We wrote down every detail of our account. The interrogators seemed especially interested in the McDonald's bag, so we repeated in detail what we knew about the McDonald's bag. A law enforcement official stood near us, holding 14 Syrian passports in his hand. We answered more questions. And finally we went home.
Home Sweet Home The next day, I began searching online for news about the incident. There was nothing. I asked a friend who is a local news correspondent if there were any arrests at LAX that day. There weren't. I called Northwest Airlines' customer service. They said write a letter. I wrote a letter, then followed up with a call to their public relations department. They said they were aware of the situation (sorry that happened!) but legally they have 30 days to reply.
I shared my story with a few colleagues. One mentioned she'd been on a flight with a group of foreign men who were acting strangely -- they turned out to be diamond traders. Another had heard a story on National Public Radio (NPR) shortly after 9/11 about a group of Arab musicians who were having a hard time traveling on airplanes throughout the U.S. and couldn't get seats together. I took note of these two stories and continued my research. Here are excerpts from an article written by Jason Burke, Chief Reporter, and published in The Observer (a British newspaper based in London) on February 8, 2004: Terrorist bid to build bombs in mid-flight: Intelligence reveals dry runs of new threat to blow up airliners
Islamic militants have conducted dry runs of a devastating new style of bombing on aircraft flying to Europe, intelligence sources believe. The tactics, which aim to evade aviation security systems by placing only components of explosive devices on passenger jets, allowing militants to assemble them in the air, have been tried out on planes flying between the Middle East, North Africa and Western Europe, security sources say.
...The... Transportation Security Administration issued an urgent memo detailing new threats to aviation and warning that terrorists in teams of five might be planning suicide missions to hijack commercial airliners, possibly using common items...such as cameras, modified as weapons.
...Components of IEDs [improvised explosive devices] can be smuggled on to an aircraft, concealed in either clothing or personal carry-on items... and assembled on board. In many cases of suspicious passenger activity, incidents have taken place in the aircraft's forward lavatory.
So here's my question: Since the FBI issued a warning to the airline industry to be wary of groups of five men on a plane who might be trying to build bombs in the bathroom, shouldn't a group of 14 Middle Eastern men be screened before boarding a flight?
Apparently not. Due to our rules against discrimination, it can't be done. During the 9/11 hearings last April, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman stated that ...it was the policy (before 9/11) and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that's discriminatory.
So even if Northwest Airlines searched two of the men on board my Northwest flight, they couldn't search the other 12 because they would have already filled a government-imposed quota.
I continued my research by reading an article titled Arab Hijackers Now Eligible For Pre-Boarding from Ann Coulter (_ www.anncoulter.com _
( http://www.anncoulter.com/ ) ):
On September 21, as the remains of thousands of Americans lay smoldering at Ground Zero, [Secretary of Transportation Norman] Mineta fired off a letter to all U.S. airlines forbidding them from implementing the one security measure that could have prevented 9/11: subjecting Middle Eastern passengers to an added degree of pre-flight scrutiny. He sternly reminded the airlines that it was illegal to discriminate against passengers based on their race, color, national or ethnic origin or religion.
Coulter also writes that a few months later, at Mr. Mineta's behest, the Department of Transportation (DOT) filed complaints against United Airlines and American Airlines (who, combined, had lost 8 pilots, 25 flight attendants and 213 passengers on 9/11 - not counting the 19 Arab hijackers). In November 2003, United Airlines settled their case with the DOT for 1.5million.InMarch2004,AmericanAirlinessettledtheircasewiththeDOTfor1.5 million. In March 2004, American Airlines settled their case with the DOT for 1.5million.InMarch2004,AmericanAirlinessettledtheircasewiththeDOTfor1.5 million. The DOT also charged Continental Airlines with discriminating against passengers who appeared to be Arab, Middle Eastern or Muslim. Continental Airlines settled their complaint with the DOT in April of 2004 for $.5 million.
From what I witnessed, Northwest Airlines doesn't have to worry about Norman Mineta filing a complaint against them for discriminatory, secondary screening of Arab men. No one checked the passports of the Syrian men. No one inspected the contents of the two instrument cases or the McDonald's bag. And no one checked the limping man's orthopedic shoe. In fact, according to the TSA regulations, passengers wearing an orthopedic shoe won't be asked to take it off. As their site states, Advise the screener if you're wearing orthopedic shoes...screeners should not be asking you to remove your orthopedic shoes at any time during the screening process. (Click _here_
( http://www.tsa.gov/public/interapp/editorial/editorial_1571.xml ) to read the TSA website policy on orthopedic shoes and other medical devices.)
I placed a call to the TSA and talked to Joe Dove, a Customer Service Supervisor. I told him how we'd eaten with metal utensils moments in an airport diner before boarding the flight and how no one checked our luggage or the instrument cases being carried by the Middle Eastern men. Dove's response was, Restaurants in secured areas -- that's an ongoing problem. We get that complaint often. TSA gets that complaint all the time and they haven't worked that out with the FAA. They're aware of it. You've got a good question. There may not be a reasonable answer at this time, I'm not going to BS you.
At the Detroit airport no one checked our IDs. No one checked the folds in my newspaper or the content's of my son's backpack. No one asked us what we'd done during our layover, if we bought anything, or if anyone gave us anything while we were in the airport. We were asked all of these questions (and many others ) three weeks earlier when we'd traveled in Europe -- where passengers with airport layovers are rigorously questioned and screened before boarding any and every flight. In Detroit no one checked who we were or what we carried on board a 757 jet liner bound for American's largest metropolis.
Two days after my experience on Northwest Airlines flight #327 came this notice from SBS TV, The World News, July 1, 2004: The U.S. Transportation and Security Administration has issued a new directive which demands pilots make a pre-flight announcement banning passengers from congregating in aisles and outside the plane's toilets. The directive also orders flight attendants to check the toilets every two hours for suspicious packages.
Through a series of events, The Washington Post heard about my story. I talked briefly about my experience with a representative from the newspaper. Within a few hours I received a call from Dave Adams, the Federal Air Marshal Services (FAM) Head of Public Affairs. Adams told me what he knew: There were 14 Syrians on NWA flight #327. They were questioned at length by FAM, the FBI and the TSA upon landing in Los Angeles. The 14 Syrians had been hired as musicians to play at a casino in the desert. Adams said they were scrubbed. None had arrest records (in America, I presume), none showed up on the FBI's no fly list or the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorists List. The men checked out and they were let go. According to Adams, the 14 men traveled on Northwest Airlines flight #327 using one-way tickets. Two days later they were scheduled to fly back on jetBlue from Long Beach, California to New York -- also using one-way tickets.
I asked Adams why, based on the FBI's credible information that terrorists may try to assemble bombs on planes, the air marshals or the flight attendants didn't do anything about the bizarre behavior and frequent trips to the lavatory. Our FAM agents have to have an event to arrest somebody. Our agents aren't going to deploy until there is an actual event, Adams explained. He said he could not speak for the policies of Northwest Airlines.
So the question is... Do I think these men were musicians? I'll let you decide. But I wonder, if 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?
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WWS/article_landing.aspx?titleid=1&articleid=711 _
I am unfamiliar with Ann Coulter other than to have seen her advertisements and once in a while to have seen her participate in a verbal free for all of some kind on one of the news channels : I seldom watch those because I don't understand much of what is said, and I see no reason at all to devote time to people who are paid to be rude to each other in public. Nothing is going to be learned beyond some personal facts about the abilities of the participants.
But it is clear to me that the TSA was born in anarch-tyranny. It does the each things like confiscate scissors and an elderly general's Medal of Honor, but it can do nothing about serious matters like this.
Are we doomed as a nation? Would we not be better off with far less "security" of the Gomer Gestapo TSA variety, since it isn't going to do much about situations like this? Or have I missed something?
Subject: So, we probably are not any safer
http://www.womenswallstreet.com/WWS/article_landing.aspx?titleid=1&articleid=711 I like her finish "So the question is... Do I think these men were musicians? I'll let you decide. But I wonder, if 19 terrorists can learn to fly airplanes into buildings, couldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?"
The hell of it is, there are reasonable measures that could be taken to increase security, but that isn't the direction that has been taken. What is wrong with the people who are supposed to be running things?
Mark