-Caveat Lector- ........Jerky LeBeouf sounds off!................
........I know it's I'll likely be thrown into a containment dungeon for potential subversives after writing this - and that John Ashcroft will proclaim my arrest as another giant leap towards victory in the Crusade Against TerraT - but goddamnit, enough is enough already. Somebody has to say what so desperately needs to be said, and it might as well be yer old pal Jerky. Airport security workers are totally out of control, and they need to be taken down a notch. Pronto. Don't believe me? Then ask Fred Hubbell. Fred is an eighty-year-old veteran of World War II who made the mistake of cracking an exasperated joke during the second full-scale pat-down he and his wife were forced to go through at a Connecticut airport before being allowed to board their flight to Texas. Spotting a trooper thoroughly checking the contents of his wallet, Fred declared: "What do you expect to find in there, a rifle?" At the merest sound of the verboten word rifle, trooper Wayne Foster puffed out his handlebar moustache, looked up from beneath his wide-brimmed Smoky Bear hat, and gave Fred a taste of his no-doubt withering stare. "Do you think that was an appropriate remark?" he asked the decorated combat veteran. When Fred made the mistake of replying in the affirmative, he earned himself a handcuffed perp-walk through the crowded concourse, a fingerprinting, a mug-shot-taking, a missed flight, and an eighty dollar fine for 'creating a public disturbance.' When asked whether putting an elderly vet through all that fuss and bother was appropriate and/or at all necessary, the head of airport security told reporters: "I want to be sure that when people step on that plane they're 100 percent comfortable." Yeah. Because nothing puts one's mind at ease like watching an octogenarian war hero with his hands chained behind his back being marched off to hell-knows-where by a couple of power-tripping, armed-to-the-teeth security goons. On the Soothing Sights Scale, it's second only to watching an old lady drowning kittens, one by one, in a bucket of spit she's been saving up for just this occasion. Meow! But if abuse of authority isn't your bag, how about stupidity on such a grandiose level, it borders on the surreal? If so, then Judy Powell's got a story for you. The British grandmother set off alarms at Los Angeles International when the crack security squad caught sight of an assault rifle in one of her bags. a two-inch long, plastic assault rifle. It was the one that came bundled in the package with the GI Joe doll she'd bought for her grandson, you see. "Security examined the toy as if it was going to shoot them and looked at the rifle," Judy later told the press. "I was really angry to start with because of the absurdity of the situation. But then I saw the funny side of it and thought this was simple lunacy. I was simply stunned when I realised they were serious." Eventually, after determining that the chances of this middle aged tourist going on a tiny, plastic killing spree were remote at best, the bag screeners let her board the plane. without the toy, which they kept. Thank God! They probably saved a hundred lives that day! Way to earn your paycheck, gang! When asked about the incident, a spokesman for the airport embarrassed himself by declaring: "We have instructions to confiscate anything that looks like a weapon or a replica. If GI Joe was carrying a replica then it had to be taken from him." Give it up for Zeer O'Tolerance, ladies and gentlemen! Everybody's favorite Police State Comic! (Failure to laugh and applaud vigorously will result in stiff penalties and indefinite detention in our on-site, government approved incarceration facility.) Okay. so far, we've witnessed the humiliation of an aging veteran over a harmless comment, and the disarming of a tiny plastic man who was hiding in a British grandmother's luggage. It couldn't possibly get more pathetic, more ridiculous than that. could it? Hold on to your horses, Paco, cuz this next true story takes the cake and shoves big handfuls of it up your tight, pink asshole. New Yorker Elizabeth McGarry was headed for Florida, with her baby in tow, when a security guard at JFK Airport found three bottles in her carry-on luggage and asked what they contained. When McGarry informed him the bottles contained pre-pumped breast milk for her baby, the guard said: "You have to drink it." When McGarry balked at drinking her own breast milk, the guard said: "You have to drink it, or you're not getting on the plane." McGarry offered to put a little on her arm and lick it, but that wasn't good enough for Mister Fucking Tough Guy. "You have to drink from the bottle," he insisted. "All three bottles." And so, while a gathering crowd watched and the sneering Rent-a-Thug contemplated the gut-laughs his telling of this story would generate at the pool hall later that evening, McGarry - not wanting to miss her flight - swallowed her pride, then swallowed three gulps of her own tit juice. Apparently, this isn't the first time this has happened. And so it's come to this. Despite all the post-911 promises of tighter oversight and increased hiring standards for our "vital" airport security, all that's really been done is to give the same useless idiots who've always done the job carte blanche to treat us, the public, with as much hostility, disrespect and utter contempt as they can muster. Newly empowered, the brooding police academy dropouts, perpetually-annoyed tooth-sucking soul-sisters, and snickering Beavis and Butthead clones of yore have evolved into new breeds: The anal retentive, authority-drunken Super Trooper. The Wand-Waving Queen of the X-Ray Machine. The Sadistic Fetishist, finally let loose from the leash to fondle underwear and force lactating mothers to drink their own breast milk, for kicks. We now have in our midst nothing less than a nation-wide, completely unregulated, minimum-wage Gestapo. "But Jerky!" I can already hear some of you typing. "Don't you remember the horrific events of September 11?! You can't be too careful these days! If we are to survive as a nation, we must require nothing less than the utmost vigilance from the men and women who watch over our airports! Isn't the extra security worth a little added inconvenience?!" The problem with such assumptions is that they simply don't apply, here. It wouldn't be unfair, for instance, to describe what happened to Fred Hubble as: "being too careful." In fact, that would be far too generous and forgiving a description. Nor does confiscating a vaguely gun-shaped, half-ounce wad of plastic from a GI Joe doll constitute a display of 'the utmost vigilance.' And are we now to consider being forced to drink one's own breast milk a mere inconvenience? If anything, such behavior quite literally borders on bona-fide psychosis. It's the kind of behavior one might expect to see exhibited in persons suffering from severe mental illness. That most of us unquestioningly accept this - even try to rationalize and defend it - reveals a lot about how far down the slippery slope we have already slid. Israel is a tiny country. They have the world's most pro-active anti-terrorism measures in place. There are checkpoints everywhere. Israelis are the most closely monitored population on the planet. The streets are crawling with highly-trained military personnel on the look-out for potential terrorists. And yet every few days, you hear about another Palestinian blowing himself up at a crowded bus stop. So really, who are we trying to kid? As things currently stand, we would be no worse off if we chose to forgo the whole pathetic charade of airport security entirely, and let the planes fall where they may. Because if we've really come to the point where common sense, human dignity and basic respect are no longer legal interpersonal tender, then the terrorists have already won, and we're doomed no matter what we do. Bill Kalivas Webmaster www.historicist.com "The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money." -- Alexis de Tocqueville "Complete liberty of contradicting our opinion is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth." 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