On June 5, 2013, the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) finally came face-to-face with reality.
It announced that it was abandoning its plan to let passengers carry small knives, baseball bats, golf clubs and other sports equipment onto planes, as it had originally intended.
Of course, TSA didn’t drop this plan because it wanted to. It did so because of fierce opposition from passengers, Congressional leaders and airline industry officials.
TSA Administrator John Pistole had unveiled the proposal in March, saying that in these days of hardened cockpit doors, armed off-duty pilots traveling on planes and other preventive measures, small folding knives could not be used by terrorists to take over a plane.
He said that intercepting them takes time that would be better used searching for explosives and other more serious threats.
TSA screeners confiscate over 2,000 small folding knives a day from passengers.
The proposal would have permitted folding knives with blades that are 2.36 inches (6 centimeters) or less in length and are less than 1/2 inch (1 centimeter) wide. The aim was to allow passengers to carry pen knives, corkscrews with small blades and other knives.
Passengers also would also have been allowed to bring onboard novelty-sized baseball bats less than 24 inches long, toy plastic bats, billiard cues, ski poles, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks and two golf clubs.
The United States has gradually eased airline security measures that took effect after 9/11.
In 2005, TSA said it would let passengers carry on small scissors, knitting needles, tweezers, nail clippers and up to four books of matches. The agency began focusing on keeping explosives off planes, because intelligence officials believed that was the greatest threat to commercial aviation.
With regard to the use of edged weapons as terrorist tools:
- The terrorists who highjacked four jetliners and turned them into flying bombs on September 11, 2001, used only boxcutters to cut the throats of stewards and stewardesses; and
- They then either forced their way into the cockpits and overpowered and murdered the pilots, or lured the pilots to leave the cabins and murdered them.
It’s also worth remembering that for all the publicity given the TSA’s “Air Marshal” program, it’s been airline passengers who have repeatedly been the ones to subdue unruly fliers.
Consider the following incidents:
- On August 11, 2000, Jonathan Burton, a passenger aboard a Southwest Airlines flight tried to break into the cockpit was killed by other passengers who restrained him.
- On May 9, 2011, crew members and passengers wrestled a 28-year-old man to the cabin floor after he began pounding on the cockpit door of a plane approaching San Francisco.
- On February 21, 2012, passengers aboard a Continental Airlines flight from Portland to Houston rushed to aid a flight attendant subdue a Middle Eastern man who began shouting, “Allah is great!”
- On March 27, 2012, a JetBlue flight from new York to Las Vegas was forced to land in Texas after the pilot started shouting about bombs and al-Qaeda and had to be subdued by passengers.
- On January 9, 2013, passengers on board an international flight from Reykjavik to New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport subdued an unruly passenger by tying him to his seat with duct tape and zip ties after he began screaming and hitting other passengers.
- On May 27, 2013, a passenger aboard an Alaska Airlines flight from Anchorage to Portland, Oregon, tried to open an airplane door in-flight and was subdued by passengers and crew members until the plane landed in Portland.
In every one of these incidents, it’s been passengers–not the vaunted Air Marshals–who have been the first and major line of defense against mentally unstable or terroristically inclined passengers.
In opposing TSA’s proposal to loosen security restrictions, skeptical lawmakers, airlines, labor unions and law enforcement groups argued that knives and other items could be used to injure or kill passengers and crew.
Such weapons would have increased the dangers posed by the above-cited passengers (and a pilot) who erupted in frightening behavior.
Prior to 9/11, commercial airline pilots and passengers were warned: If someone tries to highjack the plane, just stay calm and do what he says.
So many airplanes were directed by highjackers to land in Fidel Castro’s Cuba that these incidents became joke fodder for stand-up comedians.
And, up to 9/11, the advice to cooperate fully with highjackers and land the planes where they wanted worked. No planes and no lives were lost.
But during 9/11, passengers and crew–with one exception–cooperated fully with the highjackers’ demands.
And all of them died horrifically when three of those jetliners were deliberately crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
World Trade Center under airplane attack
Only on United Flight 93 did the passengers and crew fight back.
In doing so, they accomplished what soldiers, military pilots, the CIA and the FBI could not: They thwarted the terrorists, sacrificing their own lives and preventing the fourth plane from destroying the White House of the Capitol Building.
Memorial to the passengers and crew of United Flight 93
Since every airline passenger must now become his or her own Air Marshal, it seems only appropriate that the criminals they face be rendered as harmless as possible.
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WARNING: ANGER THE PC AYATOLLAHS AT YOUR OWN RISK
In History, Humor, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on January 1, 2018 at 12:10 amOn June 8, 2010, newspapers around the world headlined the latest triumph of Politically Correct language.
The Israeli government had apologized for circulating a video parodying the lyrics of Michael Jackson’s hit, “We Are the World.” Its purpose: To mock terrorists from the Gaza flotilla smuggling arms into Gaza.
In early June, 2010, six Hamas ships set out in defiance of the Israel’s blockade of Gaza. One of those ships, the Mavi Marmara, suffered nine casualties during a subsequent Israeli raid on the flotilla.
In the video, Israelis dressed up as terrorists offer their own take on the incident through song.
Among its lyrics:
We’ll make the world
Abandon reason.
We’ll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa.
We are peaceful travelers
We’re waving our own knives.
The truth will never find its way to your TV.
Click here: The Flotilla Choir Presents We Con The World – YouTube
The Israeli Government Press Office distributed footage of the music video to foreign journalists on June 4, but then sent an apology to reporters just hours later, insisting it had been an accident.
“The contents of the video in no way represent the official policy of either the Government Press Office or of the State of Israel,” Israel’s Government Press Office later told CNN.
But the retraction did not stop “We Con the World” from becoming an Internet hit, getting over three million views in less than a week
By issuing such an apology the Israeli government forfeited a vital weapon in its ongoing struggle for not simply sovereignty but survival: Ridicule.
Every great tyrant has feared the laughter of his enemies. For that reason, the Roman Emperor Augustus banished the satirical poet, Ovid, from Rome and the KGB worked overtime to suppress anti-Communist jokes.
It’s clear that Israeli bureaucrats—like American ones—have caught the Political Correctness disease, where even the most criminally depraved are off-limits as targets for satire.
During most of the eight-year Presidency of Bill Clinton, the State Department applied the “rogue state” moniker to nations like Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
In a 1994 lecture, Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, defined a rogue state as one that actively tried to undermine the international system.
But in 2000, the State Department declared that it would no longer refer to such nations as “rogues.” Instead, they would now be referred to as “states of concern.”
“Rogue,” said a State Department spokesman, was “inflammatory,” and might hamper the efforts of the United States to reach agreements with its sworn enemies.
In short, it’s become Politically Incorrect to refer to even our sworn enemies as enemies.
As Steven Emerson, president of the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) puts it: “If you can’t name your enemy, how can you defeat him?”
During World War 11, GIs—and their commanders—routinely referred to German soldiers as “Krauts.” Japanese soldiers were universally referred to as “Japs.”
Throughout the Vietnam war, North Vietnamese troops were called “gooks,” “dinks” and “Charlie.” During the 1991 Gulf War, American soldiers called Iraqi soldiers “ragheads.”
Admittedly, that’s not the sort of language to use in polite company.
But there is nothing polite about war, and it’s unrealistic to expect those whose lives could be snuffed out at any moment to be Politically Correct in talking about deadly enemies.
The United States has been at war with Islamic nations since September 11, 2001. But terms such as “jihadist,” “jihadi” and “mujahedeen” are now officially forbidden by the Pentagon.
So is “Islamofascism,” a term often used to describe Islamic aggression against other countries—especially non-Muslim ones.
Similarly, the American government now seeks to impose the same Political Correctness restrictions on how to refer to daily invasions of its sovereign borders.
“Illegal alien” is taboo—although totally accurate. An “alien” is defined as “a foreigner, especially one who is not a naturalized citizen of the country where they are living.”
And a foreigner who violates another country’s immigration laws is in that country illegally.
“Undocumented immigrant” is the new fashionable term to be used by all federal agents charged with enforcing Anmerica’s immigration laws.
Liberals feel that this sounds nicer, and won’t offend our “little brown brothers” south of the Rio Grande.
“Undocumented immigrant” makes it seem as though the mass violations of America’s national border are no big deal. You might even think the illegal alien simply lost his legal papers while sneaking across the border.
More than 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science, laid out the guidelines for effective propaganda. In his notorious book, The Prince, he wrote:
…Men in general judge more by the eyes than by the hands, for every one can see, but very few have to feel. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are….
Apparently, many people in government are now convinced: If you don’t admit there is a problem, the problem doesn’t exist.
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