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"Freedom to Travel" Event

Started by Kat Kanning, May 17, 2005, 06:33 AM NHFT

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Russell Kanning


Kat Kanning

 Rigoberto, Requiesce in Pace

by Becky Akers
by Becky Akers

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So now we add murder to the sexual assault and robbery that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) commits against us.

Turns out Leviathan is a stereotypical murderer, as addicted to lying as the killers it incarcerates. It has yet to come clean about its slaughter of Rigoberto Alpizar, the American Airlines passenger gunned down by air marshals on Wednesday. Then again, why should it? Leviathan has lied for millennia and gotten away with it.

Not this time, though. The state's sloppy whoppers began unravelling as soon as they were spun. The government tried to paint Mr. Alpizar as aggressive, the sort anyone might reasonably mistake for a terrorist; his neighbors and family slashed that portrait. "Rigo Alpizar was a loving, gentle and caring husband, uncle, brother, son and friend," his sister-in-law told CNN, while a neighbor described him to Florida's Sun Sentinel: "He was a nice guy, always smiling, always talkative. Everybody is talking about a guy I know nothing about." A second neighbor echoed that: he was "very friendly and helpful to people around the neighborhood ... a very pleasant person, he and his wife both." As if this weren't enough, the couple was returning from a missionary trip to Ecuador, during which they assisted Mrs. Alpizar's uncle, a volunteer dentist. It seems that Rigo was about as far as he could get from the Al Qaeda terrorist the air marshals want us to think they perceived.

The Alpizars had arrived in Miami's airport from South America, endured the rude, hostile welcome of US Customs, and were catching a connecting flight home to Orlando ? a flight which tragically included two air marshals among its passengers. Rigo suffered from a bipolar disorder. He was already agitated when he boarded the plane, but in the final moments before the jet pulled away from the gate, his anxiety became so acute he bolted from his seat and ran for the door. And why not? Everything connected with American aviation anymore traumatizes those in perfect emotional health, let alone anyone struggling with bipolarism.

The government's most shameless lie concerns what happened next. It alleges that Rigo was shouting "I have a bomb!" as he fled. Right. Terrorists often sneak explosives past those enthusiastic gropers at the TSA checkpoints only to scream their intentions once they board a plane full of unsuspecting passengers.

It?s also surprising those passengers so calmly accepted Rigo?s announcement. There was no stampede as folks fought to leave an aircraft supposedly about to blow, nor did panicked parents push their children into the aisle with instructions to run. Indeed, no passenger even remembers Alpizar?s uttering the "B-word," though everyone agrees the air marshals and the FBI have. Copiously. CNN reported that "Dave Adams, a spokesman for the Federal Air Marshal Service, said Alpizar had run up and down the plane's aisle yelling, 'I have a bomb in my bag.'"

That contrasts with a passenger who "recalled Alpizar saying, 'I've got to get off, I've got to get off.'" Another remembered that "he wasn't saying anything; he was just running." Nor did this witness immediately think, "Terrorism!" Being a rational person instead of a hyped-up air marshal, he settled for a likelier explanation: "I said to myself, 'It is probably a person who took the wrong plane.'" A second man of similar rationality assumed Alpizar was nauseated and heading for the men?s room. Furthermore, Mrs. Alpizar chased her husband, trying to help and inadvertently explaining the situation to everyone, including the trigger-happy sky-cops. A passenger told CNN, "She was just saying her husband was sick, her husband was sick."

Also chasing poor Rigo were the marshals. Intriguingly, they were the only witnesses to Alpizar?s distress who concluded he posed a threat; no one else described Rigo as dangerous. Rather, they used words like "crazy" and "frantic": "He was running like a crazy man," one passenger told AP. Said another, "He was frantic, his arms flailing in the air."

But he didn?t fool our crack team of Robocops. They followed him onto the jetway and shot him because, they claimed, he had hollered about a bomb and was reaching into his backpack to detonate it. No explosives were found on Rigo?s body or in his baggage.

"Based on their training [the air marshals] had to take the appropriate action to defuse the situation to prevent a danger to themselves and also passengers in the terminal," spokes-stooge Adams told CNN. Yo, Dave: icing a man in cold blood does not "defuse the situation." And only government dweebs consider homicide an "appropriate action."

Trying to justify the murder of this innocent man, Leviathan has changed its story, as liars do. The Feds originally had Rigo declaiming about a bomb while running "up and down" the plane's aisle. But at least seven passengers deny that Rigo mentioned anything about a bomb, and several insist he did not speak at all. "I can tell you, he never said a thing in that airplane. He never called out he had a bomb," an architect named Jorge Borrelli told the Orlando Sentinel. "He never said a word from the point he passed me at Row 9. . . . He did not say a word to anybody." So Leviathan now alleges that Rigo shouted about the bomb in the jetway, where his killers were the only witnesses.

Sometimes Our Masters are just too stupid for words. Sound waves travel, guys, OK? Even if the passengers couldn't see the jetway, they could hear what was going on out there: "I heard very clearly, 'Stop!' and about four to six gunshots," Borrelli of Row 9 told the Orlando Sentinel. "At that point the flight attendants started screaming, 'Get down! Get down!'"

We come now to the state?s only truthful moment in this whole anti-Constitutional mess. "It appears that [the air marshals] followed the protocols and did what they were trained to do," White House Press Patsy Scott McClellan told CNN. "...these marshals appear to have acted in a way that is consistent with the extensive training that they have received."

We'll leave aside the question of whether we can call "extensive" seven weeks of training followed by the odd day here and there. Then again, we?d be better off under untrained marshals, given the slogan pounded into recruits: "Dominate. Intimidate. Control."

This chillingly fascist motto prompts agreement with Rep. John Mica (R-Fla), chairman of the House aviation subcommittee, who crowed to USA Today, "The system worked exactly as designed."

Shooting unarmed, obviously distraught Americans who are hurrying to disembark without having asked permission before their plane pushes away from the gate... Clearly, the system worked exactly as designed. And here Mica unwittingly pulls the veil from Leviathan's snout to reveal the beast?s evil smirk. Neither the perverts groping us at the TSA's checkpoints nor the bullies whose pathology finds an outlet in "air marshalling" have anything to do with protecting us. They are there to dominate, intimidate and control us. And to shoot those they can't.

Further proof that the TSA exists to dominate, intimidate and control passengers comes from the abuse of Flight 924's surviving ones. As always when the government alleges a threat, everyone in the vicinity is considered not a victim of said threat but an agent of it. That sent a variety of brutes, from SWAT teams to local police, swarming aboard the plane. They ordered passengers who had committed no crime nor broken any law to put their hands on their heads. "It was quite scary," one woman told the Sun Sentinel. "They wouldn't let you move. They wouldn't let you get anything out of your bag..."

Another passenger told Time Magazine, "I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official... They were pointing the guns directly at us instead of pointing them to the ground. One little girl was crying. There was a lady crying all the way to the hotel."

The bags of these passengers who had committed no crime nor broken any law were strewn outside the aircraft, where bomb-sniffing dogs set to work on them. Cops frisked the passengers before marching them off the plane for more domination, intimidation, and interrogation. No news account I've seen mentions a search warrant. I wonder whether any brave soul asked to see one or refused to be felt up in its absence.

The death of Rigoberto Alpizar is not an "unfortunate incident," as Rep[rehensible] Mica so callously called it. It is instead the logical result of a people eagerly trading its freedom for security, of cowards who see terrorists crouched behind every tray table, of adults childishly scaring themselves with ghost stories of phantasmagorical bombers. Tragically, these babies look to their Congressional nannies for a protection they shouldn?t want and don?t need. And Congress happily rushes to oblige. Rep. Mica boasted to USA Today, "We've got a small army out there ready to protect and defend the flying public."

Yep. And like any army, it shoots to kill.

December 12, 2005

Becky Akers [send her mail] writes primarily about the American Revolution.

Russell Kanning

#48
So is it time to board a plane with a gun so maybe we can defend ourselves against the sky marshalls?

Is it time to stop paying taxes into leviathan?

Our government is killing people. I think they are starting with the middle eastern looking people.

Dreepa

So on my flight last Friday from Boston.  Everyone took their shoes off but me in line.
I just walked right on through.

At SFO on Monday I was told to take my shoes off several times.  I refused.  I did not get the pat down.  I just got the foot swabbing, then I was allowed to go past.

Russell Kanning

8)
I haven't taken my shoes off either .... but I don't fly much.

TackleTheWorld

Quote from: Dreepa on December 13, 2005, 11:33 AM NHFT
At SFO on Monday I was told to take my shoes off several times.? I refused.?

That's the spirit!

cathleeninnh

I didn't take my shoes off at Manchester when we flew out on the 3rd. They didn't even act put upon, just swabbed my grungy tennies and off I went. Worlds faster than those retying shoes.

Cathleen

Kat Kanning

http://www.detroitnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051215/OPINION03/512150320/1016

Thursday, December 15, 2005

George Weeks

License-passport will solve security worry

Their titles are the same, but not their job descriptions.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former national security adviser in the White House, deals with diplomacy. Michigan Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land deals with driver licenses and other decidedly domestic affairs.

But Land also is on the front line of a national security and diplomatic matter that could not be imagined by her 40 pre-terrorism predecessors: ensuring safe borders and other aspects of homeland security.

Land has a good idea that she's discussed with the Department of Homeland Security, members of Congress, Canadian officials and assorted interest groups who have a stake in the proposed new federal regulations on the Real ID Act and the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative.

The regulations would require a passport or the equivalent to document re-entry to the United States by Jan. 1, 2008. The Detroit Regional Chamber and others fret that a passport-grade requirement for crossing would disrupt tourism and interrupt the $411 billion in U.S.-Canada trade.

U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Menominee, co-chair of the 55-member Northern Border States Caucus, is among those who have discussed the possibility of a three-year delay in implementation.

"The testimonies by the representatives of the busiest chambers of commerce in the U.S. and Canada gave me reason to believe that the implementation of this proposal, in its current form, may have a negative economic impact on both countries," Stupak says.

A lengthy delay would be a mistake. It could be avoided by expedited consideration of Land's idea of a dual driver's license/passport that would simplify the federal requirements for foreign travel by combining state driver's license and federal passport into a single document.

The state would determine upon issuing the license whether the applicant is a citizen, and that information would appear in a bar code or magnetic strip that border patrol officers could scan.

Land says Michigan might be offered as a pilot project for applying the concept. If place-of-birth and other federally required information for border passage are put on our driver's licenses, it might mean a slight increase in the cost of obtaining a license.

Another five bucks or so would be worth it if it would contribute to better border security.

"Let Michigan be a pilot," Land says.

Another 2005 national model pushed by Land was the America's Waterways Watch project in which she sought, through mailings to nearly 300,000 watercraft owners, to encourage them to watch out for suspicious activity on waterways and report it to the Coast Guard.

In a year-end interview, she also bragged about other accomplishments: a 43 percent decrease in waiting time for customers, expense reductions that enabled her to redirect about $600,000 to enhance customer services, directing $4 million in federal funds to Detroit so that next year it will join the state in a uniform optical scan voting system and others.

But what strike me most about Land's year are her efforts on homeland security.

George Weeks is The News' political columnist. Reach him at (517) 371-3660 or gweeks07 at aol.com

Kat Kanning

Babies On US No Fly List

Reuters/Caroline Drees | December 16 2005

Sarah Zapolsky was checking in for a flight to Italy when she discovered her 9-month-old son's name was on the United States' "no-fly" list of suspected terrorists.

"We pointed down to the stroller, and he sat there and gurgled," Zapolsky said, recalling the incident at Dulles International Airport outside Washington in July. "The desk agent started laughing. ... She couldn't print us out a boarding pass because he's on the no-fly list."

Zapolsky, who did not want her son's name made public, said she was initially amused by the mix-up. "But when I found out you can't actually get off the list, I started to get a bit annoyed."

Zapolsky isn't alone.

According to the Transportation Security Administration, more than 28,000 people have applied to the TSA redress office to get on the "cleared list," which takes note of individuals whose names are similar to those on the terrorism watch list, but does not guarantee an end to no-fly list hassles.

The TSA does not reveal how many or which names are actually on the list, and complaints do not get names removed since they refer to suspected terrorists. The best innocent travelers can hope for is a letter from the TSA which it says should facilitate travel, but is no panacea.

In addition to babies, the victims of mistaken identity on the no-fly list have included aging retirees and public figures such as Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Republican Rep. Don Young of Alaska and Democratic Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.

"It's a significant problem," said Brenda Jones, the spokeswoman for Rep. Lewis, who travels by plane at least twice a week. She said the congressman had written to the TSA, but "he is still on the no-fly list, and the problems persist."

SECRETIVE LIST

The classified no-fly list was adopted after the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks to prevent suspected terrorists from getting on aircraft or coming to the United States. Airlines must check passenger names against the list before they are allowed to get on a plane.

While the number of suspected terrorists on the list is unknown, aviation sources estimate it includes tens of thousands of names, if not more.

TSA spokesman Christopher White said the agency had seven people working full-time on processing applications to get on the cleared list. Considering the number of applications, that works out to more than 4,000 complaints per redress officer.

"We do take the cleared list very seriously, and it's also important for us to focus on the right people. It does us no good to focus on the wrong John Doe," White said.

Cleared individuals receive a letter from the TSA which says "we have provided sufficient personal information to the airlines to distinguish you from other individuals" but cautions that "TSA cannot ensure that your travel will be delay free."

John Graham, a 63-year-old former State Department official, said his TSA letter had not helped at all.

"I'm at a point now where I don't really care whether my name is on the list as a mistake, as mistaken identity, or whether someone at TSA does intend to hassle me. The fact is, there's a total absence of due process," he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union calls the no-fly list system unconstitutional, saying it treats people as guilty without a trial and unfairly deprives them of freedoms. It also says the system is an inaccurate and ineffective security method.

Despite efforts by the TSA to address complaints and concerns about the no-fly list, ACLU attorney Reggie Shuford said very little had changed to improve the process.

"We continually hear from people being caught up on the no-fly list with the same frustrating experiences and inability to get off the list," he said.

Peter Johnson, a retired bibliographer at Princeton University, said travel became "hellish" after he discovered his name was on the no-fly list in August 2004.

"I'm not sure if what's behind this is an effort to simply control people or if it's largely mismanagement and poorly conceptualized programming," Johnson said, adding a TSA official had told him there were more than 2,000 other Peter Johnsons in the United States who reported similar problems.

Russell Kanning

Why couldn't the person behind the counter change the name on the babies ticket?

Lloyd Danforth


JonM

How does a name get on the list?  If say every name of every congressman were on the no-fly list, I suspect change would be rapid.

Dreepa

My brother in law is on the list.
He just got a new job that requires him to travel 2x per month.  He is rapidly thinking that maybe I have been right these past few years. ;D

Kat Kanning

Obviously a very dangerous person.  Good thing they stepped in to make everyone safer.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051221/ap_on_re_us/pastor_s_wife_disturbance
Wife of Joel Osteen Asked to Leave Plane

By PAM EASTON, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 21 minutes ago

HOUSTON - The wife of the pastor of the nation's largest church was asked to leave a plane after she failed to comply with a flight attendant's instructions, the
FBI said Tuesday.


Houston Lakewood Church pastor Joel Osteen, his wife, Victoria, and their two children boarded a Continental Airlines flight from Houston to Vail, Colo., Monday. The plane's door had been closed when Victoria Osteen and a flight attendant had a disagreement.

"She failed to comply with the flight attendant's instructions, and they were asked to leave the flight," FBI spokeswoman Luz Garcia said without elaborating on the disagreement.

The FBI reviewed a report from Continental after the incident, Garcia said. No charges will be filed, she said.

The flight was delayed more than an hour while the Osteens' luggage was retrieved, Garcia said. The family took another flight to Colorado, where church spokesman Don Iloff said they were skiing Tuesday.

Iloff called the disagreement with the flight attendant "minor" but would not say what happened.

"In semantics, they might have been asked to be removed," he said. "Really, it was more of a mutual thing."

Continental spokeswoman Julie King would not discuss the disagreement but said in a statement that the situation was resolved.

Osteen's sermons are broadcast across the country and his book "Your Best Life Now" has become a best seller. His church has more than 30,000 worshippers weekly and meets in a renovated arena where the Houston Rockets once played.