Becky Akers, who regularly defends liberty from the pages of LewRockwell.com, discusses the national government’s Transportation Security Administration Nazis and their regular abuse of the rights and dignity of the American people.
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Okay, hey, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio on Radio Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
And introducing our guest today, Becky Akers from LouRockwell.com.
Hi, Becky.
Hi, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
Good to talk to you again.
Well, it's good to talk to you.
Thanks very much for having me on.
So, when I went back through your files, I noticed you had written this great article for the Christian Science Monitor, and at the bottom of the article it said you're actually writing a book now about the TSA.Is that right?
Yes, it is, and it has them trembling in their boots, let me tell you.
Oh, I can't wait to read that.
What's it going to be called?
Or is that a big secret?
Don't know the secret here, if it's a secret.
It's not a secret, it's just I haven't come up with a clever title yet, so...
Oh, okay, well, that won't be too hard for you, I'm certain.
Well, I have to say they give me an awful lot of material to work with.
I just love this war on sippy cups now, that is the funniest thing.
Can you imagine treating a little boy like a terrorist because he's clutching a sippy cup?
You know, I saw this thing, and you know, apparently they've taken the video down from the TSA website.
Oh, have they?
Or at least, I couldn't get it to play, but I found the YouTube of it somewhere else.
Okay.
And I sat there, and I don't know if everybody's heard of this, I only know of it from your article, which I saw late last night, but there was this lady...
It apparently was all over the internet, with people really outraged initially at the treatment.
And what happened was a mother tried to get onto a flight with her little boy, and his sippy cup had water in it.
And she says that she offered to drink the water to throw it out anything.
She didn't care, she just wanted to hang onto the cup, because it's the only thing he would drink from.
And they had a long flight, they were flying from Reagan National in D.C. out to Las Vegas.
So despite everything she offered to do, the TSA goon confiscated the cup, and finally somehow she did get it back.
She and the boy were, the little boy were escorted out of the secure area, and when she got out of that area, she says that she was so upset, her hand was shaking, and she dumped the water accidentally.
The TSA says that she deliberately upturned the cup and dumped the water on the floor.
Which is terrorism.
You know, that's what we're talking here, and this is happening across the board.
There are a ton of people that have been caught in this kind of nonsense, where they clearly have absolutely no malicious intent, they're frustrated, they're upset, they're being told that their $200 ticket or whatever is going to be forfeit, and they're being accused of terrorism because they talk back, or they commit some innocuous action like dumping water on the floor.
And for that, they're threatened, they're told they're going to be arrested.
It's interesting, she actually is either currently or formerly employed with the Secret Service.
So I was fascinated by the fact that when her story was released, the TSA immediately jumped on it and contradicted it, and I thought, you know, we've basically got two different government employees here, which one do we believe?
I believe the one that's the victim of the other one.
And only because the TSA, in their defense, as you say, they immediately jumped on board, they put up a new website called TSA Mythbusters, and put up the video for me to see.
And the first thing I thought when I saw the video, I'm waiting, you know, it takes a minute or two, I guess, for finally the victim to show up on the screen.
But when she does, I notice everybody's just walking by, nobody's really having a problem, this doesn't even really seem to be a checkpoint, it's just some goofball TSA people standing in a hallway, and everybody's walking by.
And for some reason, you know, it wasn't even apparent to me that there was a sippy cup visible.
And if there was, I didn't understand how it was that the lady cop who was standing there even got the idea, hold it right there, open your bag, what's in your bag?
Do you have a sippy cup in there?
What is going on?
I'm sorry, it sounds so foolish even saying it, but this is what happened, right?
This is what happens, and this is actually, not to overload it with meaning or anything, but this is really what goes on in a police state.
The most innocuous actions are taken as evidence of, you know, thwarting the state.
If you displease the wrong people, your life is ruined.
It's arbitrary.
That's one reason I think the TSA so far has survived, is because this stuff is so arbitrary.
And that's to their credit, they think.
If you go to the airport and they hassle you, and you say, what is this, they say, hey, it's random, you know.
The computer picked you, and that's what makes us, you know, that's like their protection, basically.
That's right.
And it works even more nefarious, because there are about two million flyers every day.
I don't have statistics, I don't think anyone does, on how many people are being pulled aside or harassed by the TSA, but so far I'm convinced it is a tiny, tiny percentage.
Most people go through the checkpoints, and yes, they have to take their shoes off, and yes, they may be wanded.
Most of the people who are wanded and picked on don't care.
They're actually glad for it.
This is borne out by a number of different polls.
They think, oh, wow, this is great, you know, they're protecting us.
And the few people that are upset, like Monica Emerson, the mother with the sippy cup, the very few people that are, it's such a tiny, tiny percentage that it's not making any difference.
Now, it's unfortunate that in a free country, well, supposedly free country, formerly free country, how about that?
In a formerly free country, it's unfortunate that most people do go by their personal experience.
And if something doesn't personally bother them, and they've never personally been harassed, their attitude is pretty much, hey, she was making trouble.
Now, I actually saw this on different comments on websites, you know, ABC News had, I don't know, a couple hundred comments on this incident.
And people are almost always ganging up against her once it came out that her story had some discrepancies in it.
Now, prior to that, prior to the TSA painting her as a liar, you know, sentiment was very much on her side.
Once it became evident that there were some discrepancies in her story, people are just out for blood.
Well, now, wait a minute, what's the discrepancy is that they say she dumped it out on purpose.
But as you detail in your article, and as is visible on the video, if anybody looks at the YouTube, you can't really see what happens when she spills the water.
No, you can't.
Somebody passes in front of the camera, and it blocks that crucial moment.
So are there any other actual discrepancies, or just what they claim?
She also said that she was surrounded by four cops.
Now, it's very possible she's talking about a time that is not recorded.
I only saw one cop on the video.
She says that there were three TSA people at one time, the most there were were two.
Now, again, she doesn't say, you know, while I was being filmed.
It's just simply, this is what happened in the course of it.
Well, but I remember, if I remember right, it's the lady cop who's originally messing with her and some supervisor type guy in a suit comes over and then the guy on the bicycle rides up.
So that's three.
Right.
And, you know, she's on her knees digging through her stroller bag and what have you looking up.
She's surrounded by three goons, you know, that doesn't seem like too big of a discrepancy to me.
And by the way, this is the thing that made me just crazy was as she's digging through her stroller bag in the video, you can plainly see the top.
I think the one in the suit comes up and grabs her kid.
Yeah.
I got that.
I am not positive that that guy is a cop.
I think that's her fiancee.
Oh, OK.
I'm almost positive.
I had the same reaction.
I watched the video a number of times.
And the first time I had your exact reaction, it's like, what in the world?
They can't just take her child like that.
Now, she does say in her written account that her fiancee, she tried to alert her fiancee.
If I recall correctly, but you'd have to check Bill Adler's Web site to get her full account.
I think she doesn't connect with her fiancee.
So it's very possible that guy is a cop.
My impression, though, is she doesn't seem more alarmed by this strange man coming up and grabbing her kid.
I assume that was her fiancee, but it is it's troubling nonetheless on a number of different levels.
You know, one of the things that impressed me so much was the passerby just streaming on past.
Nobody caring, nobody thinking it's odd that a lone woman and her little boy are surrounded by goons.
It's like this is the true mark of a police state because nobody wants to stick their head their neck out because then they're going to be the next one to miss their flight.
That's it.
Exactly.
That's it.
And it is so arbitrary, as we've said.
And, you know, the other thing that really puzzled me is this is over a puddle of water and we have three, four, five different officials involved for, you know, the video itself is 11 minutes long.
And we know this incident went on much longer than what's on tape.
So you have this many people, this many tax, you know, our taxes are paying these leeches.
This many people concerned about a woman dropping water on a floor.
This is, you know, again, remember, we're not talking theft.
We're not talking murder.
She didn't assault anybody talking.
She dropped a few, you know, a little puddle of water on the floor.
Right.
And see, the thing is, the threat against her isn't prosecution.
The threat against her is I will arrest you right now and ruin your trip that you're trying to make.
I will.
That's your sentence is, you know, just the arrest.
They'll dismiss the charges, let her go or give her a fine or something later.
That's not that big of a deal.
But the deal is, hey, you get down on your knees and you mop up that water with with, you know, your kids clothes or whatever piece of cloth you have available or else I'll arrest you.
So it's not that anywhere in their job description, they have the authority to force civilians onto their hands and knees to clean up messes.
It's just that they can basically give you a made up order that they want.
That's right.
They can do it.
And you have an excellent point.
It's that extortion that's going on.
I have power of you.
I can make you miss your flight.
I can make you forfeit your ticket.
I can keep you here all day.
I can have the cops arrest you and throw you in jail.
There was a couple a little while ago, Don and Carl Persing, who were arrested when they landed because a flight attendant alleged that they were having oral sex on the plane.
This isn't at all what happened.
Carl Persing is undergoing chemotherapy.
He was exhausted from running the airport gauntlet and he laid down on the plane with his head in his fiancee's lap.
A flight attendant came past and didn't like that and told him to sit up.
And Carl did, but eventually lay back down because he was feeling so awful.
This flight attendant made up the story that they were having sex and told this to the FBI.
The FBI filed an affidavit against these people.
Carl Persing was convicted of this and is being sentenced in August.
He faces a possibility of 20 years in prison because as a sick man, he laid down with his head in his fiancee's lap on a plane.
Everyone pack your shit and move out of this country.
It is too late for Liberty here.
That's, you know, 20 years, 20 years for taking a nap.
And the thing is, and see, here's the thing, this is really getting to the heart of it.
He was convicted.
He goes before the judge, presumably his lawyer said, judge, he was taken a nap and the judge says, I don't care, we're going to do this anyway.
That's basically what's going on since flight attendants have been deputized by the federal government and this predates 9-11, they were deputized.
I've been trying to track down the exact year and I haven't come up with the year, but I think it was sometime in the 80s and they were deputized.
It is now a federal crime to contradict these people, to do anything to defend yourself.
Especially if a flight attendant wants to make your life hell, they can, they'll get away with it, they're paid to do it.
So this kind of stuff is going on.
There was Phyllis Dentonfoss.
Let's see, she was, a couple of years ago, I think 2004, and this was back in an airport, the TSA checkpoint.
She was let aside for a secondary screening.
The screener was a young woman, Phyllis is a retired school teacher in her 60s in Wisconsin.
The screener was a young, very athletic woman, and Phyllis charged her with sexual groping and molestation.
And when the woman began groping her, Phyllis pushed back against her and said, stop it, don't do that to me.
For that, Phyllis was arrested, she was brought to trial, she was convicted of assaulting a screener.
And again, this is like what goes on in a police state.
As a citizen, you are not allowed to defend yourself when you are being sexually molested by TSA goons.
So, you're right, pack your bags, what else, but again, this is happening to only a few people here and there so far, so the TSA is able to get away with it.
It seems like overall, I'm getting this impression that our society, particularly the people with authority, but even just the society as a whole, we've just abandoned reason.
I mean, when I was a kid in the 1980s, which I like to think was not too long ago, there was such a thing as adults using reason and discretion to work things out.
You know what I'm saying?
There was the idea that, you know, well, the rules say this, but the right thing to do in this situation is that and it's not that big of a deal and people can just, you know, go on about their lives and try to avoid this kind of friction.
And yet, it seems like what's happening now is, no, I'm sorry, the rules are the rules and the computer says that you have to stand over there and zero tolerance, it doesn't matter if you're talking about a butter knife on the floor of the back seat of the kid's car in the parking lot at the high school, zero tolerance policy for him, he might as well have tried to stab somebody to death.
It doesn't matter, you know, and like you're saying, on the plane, the guy had cancer, he was taking a nap, but she asked him to sit up and he insisted on napping some more and so that's it.
20 years for you, pal.
Yes, it's, you know, it's really sad.
It's as though if we do not unquestionably obey the way that slaves obey masters, we're going to be punished.
And this is so inimical to everything this country was founded on and it is so infantilizing to the people, to us, we're being treated worse than children, we're being treated like slaves.
And what astonishes me is that for the first time in history, the slaves are not revolting.
I mean, that's all you know, throughout most of human history, slavery has existed.
And at almost any time you can name, there has been a slave revolt.
No slave willingly accepts his fetters, he always tries to be free.
The American people, the tighter the fetters go, just keep saying more, you know, chain me up a little bit more, I'm enjoying this, please.
Just keep me safe.
That's all I ask.
And you can put as many chains on me as you like.
Maybe if our slogan was the home of the cowards, then we'd have a little defiance about us and always be trying to prove that to not be the case, but instead we're the home of the brave.
So therefore we can be as cowardly as we like because we got a good slogan.
You know, that's another very good point, Scott, because this country, the rulers of our country are masters of propaganda.
And actually, I shouldn't say that, they're not that good at propaganda, that's what always surprises me.
No, they're not.
They're still ham-fisted.
Yeah.
And people still accept it.
It's like, oh yeah, they're keeping me safe.
Yeah, you know, I'm glad they're over there bombing Iraqi children because that keeps me safe.
Right.
Like, how did you get it to that conclusion?
Well, TV said.
Yes.
Yes.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
I'm talking with Becky Akers.
She writes regularly for LouRockwell.com, and she's coming out with a book soon about the Transportation Security Administration.
We're talking about the crisis of the terrorist sippy cup.
And the secret service agent, or perhaps former secret service agent who tried to smuggle that dangerous hydrogen and oxygen-filled sippy cup onto an airplane, they were combined into water form, so it wasn't really a flammable, you know, danger of fire.
Unless the TSA says otherwise.
Yeah, I guess so.
Yeah.
See, there you go.
They scrubbed the hydrogen from the oxygen and then burned the hydrogen in the presence of the oxygen and blown up the plane.
Yes.
Just like your lipstick can suddenly become explosive once it gets into the passenger cabin.
And I have to tell you, you know, the video that the Transportation Security Administration put up on their website, which I found on YouTube later, I think they've taken theirs down.
I couldn't get it to play.
But as I watch this video, it's like ten minutes long, and I'm kind of sitting here spacing out, and I admit to you that I kept imagining the video turning into a kung fu movie and this lady just kicks all these people in the head so hard that their necks break and they fall to the floor and she goes on about her day.
It seems like some good director could have made a great kung fu scene out of that.
Innocent lady and her toddler finally fed up with the TSA break out some Bruce Lee.
Oh, there goes the three-inch punch.
I think she just broke six ribs on that guy.
See, now, Scott, I think what you're doing is reciting every passenger's fantasy when they go through a checkpoint.
Well, I guess they don't have the guys in camouflage with the M-16s standing around anymore.
Is that right?
They finally got rid of those guys?
Well, you can come to Penn Station in New York City and see all of them that you want to, even though it's just a railroad terminal and not an airport.
What has happened to us?
See, here's the thing.
I think everybody knows this, too, whether they're the cowards who like going along with it or otherwise.
I think everybody knows that if any of us are on an airplane, you take any 50 to 150 people at random from this country and put them on an airplane together and then let some jerk in a red headband try to hijack the plane and crash it into something and just watch as the passengers rip that guy apart.
Flight 93, I guess it was Flight 77, was the last one that people didn't fight back.
On Flight 93, they did any hijack between now and the end of humankind, at least that there are Americans on board, they are going to fight back and that hijack, even if it does crash to the ground, it certainly ain't getting to its target and probably they won't even get inside the cockpit door.
So this whole thing is just a big joke anyway.
I mean, guys with M-16s standing around at Penn Station, who have they protected so far?
Nobody.
I mean, who are the terrorists here?
Who are the ones putting fear into the hearts of the American people?
Osama bin Laden or the people who control our state and put the cops out on the streets with machine guns.
And the people who are harassing mothers and children at airports.
Yeah.
I mean, it's very easy to pick on people like that as opposed to finding terrorists and taking care of them.
I think it's a real commentary on the TSA and the caliber of the person it hires, that they are willing to make a little boy cry over this bogus war on terror.
Yeah.
And you know, this whole thing with the liquid span, as you point out in your article, is all bogus anyway.
Oh, absolutely.
This all comes from the supposed plot to mix explosives, the British terrorist plot.
Well, that was all make believe and all the scientists wrote quite hilarious op-eds in all the British papers saying, okay, I'm a doctorate in chemistry here.
And if I was going to set off a bomb made of these materials, here's what I would need.
A bucket of ice and 45 minutes and for no one on the plane to have a sense of smell and for there to be no turbulence and to sit in the bathroom with nobody wondering why I'm in there for almost an hour.
And I would need to mix this and this and that.
And it's the least plausible way for a terrorist to blow up a plane imaginable.
And yet everybody's got to give up their toothpaste and give up their hair gel, as you said, their lipstick.
And I mean, yeah, I'm going to hijack a plane with some lipstick.
What is this, the Twilight Zone?
We completely abandon reason here.
Oh, absolutely.
This is standard operating procedure for the TSA.
They will seize on any incident from anywhere in the world to justify more nonsense.
Do you remember the great group fest of 2004?
This is after the Chechen airliners went down.
There were two of them.
They both crashed in August of 2004.
Russian authorities on the scene said, the wreckage is so scattered, we can't figure out why they both crashed.
There were two women who were apparently suspected of being rebels, Chechen rebels, one on each plane from the passenger manifest.
Even that was in dispute.
They weren't sure about this, OK?
But the theory went that perhaps they had been able to smuggle explosives on board each of the planes.
TSA seized that and ran with it.
What the TSA said, and I still don't know how they were able to determine this since they're 3,000 miles away from the scene and investigators on the scene couldn't figure it out, but the TSA said, oh, those Chechen women put the explosives in their bosom and that's how they got them on board, so therefore we're going to grope all American women.
And for three months, from September 22 to December 21, it was official TSA policy that any woman passenger could be groped by the TSA.
And they got away with this.
Now, the mistake they made, however, was they groped a couple of famous women.
One of them was Patti LuPone and another one was Maureen Dowd.
Maureen Dowd wrote about it, and in addition to her column, there were so many women coming forward and complaining, the TSA had to get rid of it.
But again, it just shows what's going on here.
How is it that we have this bureaucracy that legitimizes a crime?
You can't grow up to a woman on a street and grope her, and the TSA said, yes, we can.
You come to an airport, you're going to get groped.
And Americans submitted to this.
Remember that it took three months to get this nonsense repealed.
To date, no TSA screener has been charged with a crime.
Now, this is what happened to Phyllis Dentonfoss that I mentioned earlier.
She was groped under this policy and she was convicted, not the woman who assaulted her.
So things are just, this is so out of whack.
And you are very correct when you say, Scott, that it's not the terrorists we need to fear, it's the people at the airports doing this stuff.
Now, in your Christian Science Monitor article that you wrote, you said, hey, there's a better way.
It's called getting the national government completely out of the airport security business.
One hundred percent out of the airport security business.
Now, does that mean that you think that planes ought to just be used as weapons?
Well, you'll notice that that's only been the case that they've been used as weapons since the feds have controlled aviation.
And in fact, hijackings, basically the feds have controlled aviation since its inception.
So we all need to be aware of that.
It's not like the TSA, the recent phenomenon or anything, it's just been called different things through decades.
But the federal government has regulated and legislated and mandated virtually every aspect of air travel at some point or another.
Airlines are still pretty much nationalized in all but name.
The federal government runs airlines.
You know, there's the sham that the airlines are owned by shareholders and the CEO tells them what to do and that sort of thing.
But this is really a sham because the federal government, if you've ever been on the FAA website or any other website that has to do with aviation, the federal rules are so long and they cover virtually every possible scenario you can think of and tell the airlines what they can do.
And it always makes me laugh when people say, but the airlines are deregulated.
It's like, yeah, they can set their pricing, but they can only set their pricing within federal guidelines.
So the feds have controlled aviation.
They still control it in all aspects.
If we got them out of that entirely, if when airlines do things like keep people on board in a plane waiting to take off for 18 hours without food and water, if the airline were held responsible for that, instead of being able to go to the feds and say, hey, we need another bailout, you would see airline service change overnight.
We would be treated like customers again instead of like criminals.
So yes, should the feds be out of the airline business?
Absolutely.
Why are they in this industry to begin with?
Why is this industry different than any other?
Why are the feds allowed to dictate every single aspect of aviation when we would protest and holler if they were dictating every aspect of our churches?
Well, I think the answer is simple.
And that is because the state is the American church and Uncle Sam is Jesus.
And Lord knows that if individuals in charge of running their own airplane companies are in charge of making decisions about those companies and how they're to be run, it'll be chaos and there will be metal falling out of the sky all day long.
And so we have to have government to be the big overseer of that because it's just too important to leave to private people.
You know, that's what the funny thing is.
It's like giving me a government program that you like that works.
I've often asked this of people and I just get these blank stares like, why then do you think they should be entrusted with your life when you get a metal cylinder flying a mile above the earth?
Tell me that.
I don't understand.
And you know, the security thing is the perfect example too, because before September 11th, as you say, it was completely regulated from beginning to end, but it was basically private contractors that they had to go by federal rules.
So that again is just a sham.
Right.
But what happened was they went on TV and they said, see, just, you know, these private contractors just aren't cutting it.
We have to nationalize it.
In fact, the Democrats pushed for it and Bush pretended to resist for a short while, if I remember right.
And then they went ahead and said, okay, we're going to nationalize the security to make it great.
And I think that probably most Americans pictured some, you know, great shining six and a half foot, blue eyed, blonde haired warrior, wonderful American security guru, you know, sent down from above to come and, but no, it's just a bunch of big fat idiots, just like it was before.
It's a bunch of people who decide to be airport security goofballs for a living, which means that they're not capable of doing anything better than that for a living.
It's the same people it's always been.
And it seems like to me, that's the kind of thing that ought to just snap people out of it.
Nationalizing it didn't change the character of the security people.
In fact, it probably just made it worse.
I remember, I think that you've pointed out in articles before that actually it's easier for a criminal and a junior high school dropout and anybody else to get a job for the TSA.It's easier for them to do that than the private companies that whatever the TSA used to be called, hired out in the first place before September 11th.
And it's fascinating to go through and find out how many TSA employees are actually criminals with records.
The TSA, I have a quote from Congressman Aldo, his name's escaping me right now, but he basically says, we were just under pressure to spend a lot of money as soon as possible setting up the TSA.
And they just went out and hired a bunch of people.
It's a riot.
You can read a statement from, again, I can't think of the guy's name, but a celebratory statement on the TSA's first anniversary.
And basically the bureaucrat admits in that, you know, we had to hire a lot of people real fast though.
We didn't have time to screen them, but boy, they're doing a good job.
You come to find out they all had criminal records.
Right.
And, and you know what, somebody who's got a, who's been a criminal could still be a good security guy.
You know, Hey, I believe that whole, you did your time and you're off parole kind of thing.
Let's remember too, that a lot of people in jail right now are not criminals.
They have not stolen.
They have not murdered.
They're there because they have political opinions that differ from the government that makes them political prisoners.
Or engaging in a black market that's, or engaging in a black market that's not truly criminal.
You're a political criminal on that, or political prisoner in that case, but I'm not talking about those.
I'm talking about people who actually be convicted of things like stealing and then they work for the TSA.
Right.
Well, and, and never even mind that even if they turned over a new leaf in prison, decided never ever to steal again because they, every time from now on, they're going to think of their grandma and how disappointed she would be if she knew that they were stealing and now they're a good person.
Now they work at TSA.
They still don't do their job worth a crap because every time the FBI or the Homeland security guys or anybody's smuggles on a smuggles, explosives or guns through airports as a test, pretending to be terrorists and smuggling this stuff in, they get away with it every time.
The TSA has something called the red team.
It goes around, it's a group of undercover people, goes around and tests airport security and you're absolutely right.
Every time they test it, it fails and we're talking failure rates of about 90%.
So I just think this is such a hoot.
It's like you are taking off your shoes for absolutely nothing.
Actually, the reason you're taking off your shoes is to acclimate you to becoming a serf instead of a citizen and the reason you are being made to mop the floor after your sippy cup spilled is to acclimate you to being a serf and not a citizen.
So the TSA does have a recognized purpose, it's just that it's not honest enough to tell us what it is and most people don't see through it.
Most people are still swallowing the propaganda that it protects us from terrorists even though, as you point out, any test that's run on the TSA checkpoints, the weapons are smuggled through every single time and the TSA is not the only government entity testing it.
The GAO also regularly tests airport checkpoints and there are a couple of other federal groups that also check checkpoints.
All the tests come back, 90% failure rates.
It goes back to what you were saying before about any hijacker now, passengers would rush him.
This is the problem with having federal or any kind of government security.
The government always fights the last battle.
It doesn't have the flexibility and the initiative that private enterprise does.
So private people, because they can move quickly, because they have the feedback that pricing gives them and supply and demand gives them, they can come up with flexible plans that work.
The federal government can't.
It fights the last battle even though the last battle is long done and isn't going to be re-fought.
So you're absolutely right, no terrorist in his right mind would try what the 9-11 guys did because we're all watching for them.
But the federal government acts as though that is the next threat and it's just laughable.
You know, again, just further on what a terrible job they're doing in fighting even the last threat.
There's a headline that came out, I guess, last week, two weeks ago, I think last week.
It said 500,000 people are on the terrorist watch list.
Now I regularly interview all these angry former CIA guys, because of course the neo-cons purge the CIA, so they all have a bone to pick, and they tell me, well I guess Shoyer gives a more doomsday estimate than the rest, but I know Philip Giraldi told me that he estimates at the most, he doesn't want to be too specific, but he thinks at the most we're talking low thousands, maybe two or three thousand people who are actually dedicated terrorists willing to come to America and actually kill Americans.
A couple of two or three thousand of them at the most in the whole world, and yet there are half a million people on the no-fly terrorist watch list.
Because again, remember, this is nothing to do with terrorism, that's simply the face the feds put on it.
This is about grabbing more and more power for the police state, and now half a million people have to say, Daddy, can I, before they go to get on a plane.
Half a million people have to genuflect and have to bow down and have to kiss the feet of the state and say, please, please, please let me travel.
So that's what this is about, and from that aspect, it's been a smashing success.
It sure has, and you know, I'm trying to remember what movie it was.
There was some movie I saw in the 1980s where it was kind of a dystopian future and everybody's got to show their ID to the government thug in order to get on the plane and all that, and I remember thinking, oh wow, you know, the future, the totalitarian future where you have to prove who you are to the government before you're allowed to travel.
What must that be like?
Oh no.
Yes, and you know, if Real ID is, well Real ID is now law, it's supposed to be implemented next year.
So far, six state legislatures have said they will not abide by its provisions, but if other states don't step up to the plate and say no to Real ID, the airport nonsense is going to spread.
You're going to be showing your papers to government thugs at virtually every interaction in the larger society.
So for instance, if you want to get into a courthouse, actually a lot of places now you already are having to show ID.
You want to go and open a bank account, you're going to have to show ID.
You want to get on a bus, a train, you're going to have to show ID.
Cops can, there was a ruling a couple years ago that cops can now ask your ID for no reason whatsoever, and you must show it.
That will be exacerbated by Real ID.
So the future is here, and it's not very pretty.
Well, I refuse to get used to it, and you know, if I have to get on a plane, I guess I'll have to take off my shoes and go through it, but I won't be desensitized afterwards.
I'll only be more pissed off, and I wish everybody else would think about it the same way.
I wish, yes, from your lips to God's ear, absolutely.
Hey, let me ask you this, because you've written about it, and I don't have any other context in which to bring this up.
This whole thing about the madam in DC, did this story not disappear faster?
I remember thinking, wow, either this story is going to disappear tomorrow, or it's going to be the biggest story ever, and everybody's going to forget about the war and Paris Hilton and Ron Paul and everything else, because we're going to all be talking about the various generals and congressmen and executive branch officials who have all been seeking the services of this DC, Heidi Fleiss, and all of a sudden, zip, whoop, off into the void, never heard another word about that.
What's going on there?
Isn't that frightening, that somebody can disappear that quickly?
I mean, and a sex scandal, too, a sex scandal in DC!
I think that we can draw a lot of lessons from this.
First of all, how very far gone we are that this story can get the kind of media play it did and then vanish.
And you don't even find her now.
I haven't Googled her in a while, so Pamela Martin may turn up if I do a search, but it's not out there easy to find.
And the second lesson I think all of us should draw is how tight the media is with the government.
Now, that may be self-evident to a lot of people, but it's good to remind ourselves of that over and over again.
For instance, let me go back to Carl Pershing and Don Sewell, the couple I mentioned where he is on chemotherapy and lay down to rest on the plane.
The media reports of that initially relied totally on the FBI's affidavit of this incident.
There was no other viewpoint consulted or expressed.
So when you read these reports in the media about this incident, it sounds horrible.
It's like, oh my goodness, this couple, yeah, I mean, goodness, can you imagine being in a seat next to this and having to watch it?
Because it makes it sound like established fact.
And I think we all need to be aware of that, and I know we all are, but still, I think you can never be too skeptical of a published report because reporters now are lazy.
They don't report.
They simply recycle what the government tells them, and they don't try to get to the real story.
They just put out there what is easily fed to them off the news wires or whatever.
So when you find out what really happened, it's quite a jolt to realize this isn't how I read it.
I got a lesson in this when I was in college and I tried to go to a Ted Kennedy rally.
I won't even go into why I was going to go, but I assure you it was not to support him.
But what the Kennedy people did was they deliberately overbooked the tickets.
They handed out thousands of tickets when they knew they only had space for two or three hundred students.
This is during finals week, too, where people were making big sacrifices to go to this thing.
When I saw the reports, and I was one of the ones that couldn't get in, in retrospect I'm very glad I wasn't any closer to that spot than I was, but when I saw the media reports of it, it was that hundreds or thousands of supporters were mobbing the place because they wanted to see Kennedy, and that wasn't it at all.
The Kennedy people deliberately gave away far many tickets than they had room for so that it would appear like that, and that's what they told the media, and that lie was recycled.
So, again, with Pamela Martin, understand that all that has to happen is the order comes down to reporters and publishers and editors.
We don't want this story out there, and it disappears.
You can't have a free society if you don't have a free media.
It seems to me that, for example, you can burn a bunch of women and children to death and machine gun them all in front of everybody on TV and call it a suicide and tell the editors and the TV people, hey, listen, we're not going to get into this.
It's just a suicide, okay, and get away with that.
I can understand that, but a sex scandal in D.C., I mean, how many hundreds and hundreds of reporters are there and bloggers and everything?
I mean, this is the kind of thing, I'm not saying it's important news, I don't even care, but I would like to see a bunch of Republicans and Democrats ruined if I can get that under the, you know, it's not like any of them are ever going to go to jail for what they did to the Branch Davidians.
Let's get them busted on a sex scandal then.
There's got to be how many bazillions of advertising dollars in this?
How many careers are, you know, could be made writing about this?
And in this case, we know that the lady gave her black book to, was it ABC News?
They have the phone numbers.
They know who all the people are.
The media has the information and they're not publishing it.
No, they're not, because there are far too many ties between the media and the government.
Remember that the government licenses media and I'm always amazed there isn't more outcry about this.
But you know, all that the government has to do, the FCC just goes to ABC and says, you want your license renewed?
And that's the end of it.
And it's like, why isn't this an outrage?
How did this stuff ever get passed?
And why is it that nobody protests this?
Newspapers are the same because so many newspapers also own television stations and broadcasting.
It's like this is all incestuous and it's all controlled.
And you know, I mean, the New York Times, all the government has to do is threaten to come and shut them down on labor problems.
It's astonishing.
You're right.
There's so much leverage there.
And in fact, in the Bill Moyers special about the media that he did not long ago, that's one of the quotes from Dan Rather is, nobody has to tell you.
Nobody has to send you a memo.
We all understand very well that the corporation that we work for is regulated from beginning to end, top to bottom by the national government of the United States and that we are not to push them.
I mean, they know that.
And that's out of the words, that's out of the mouth of Dan Rather.
That's them talking.
And why?
Of course, of course, ask a libertarian.
And the answer is always the same.
Just because, you know, we're always right.
The problem is that there's not a free market in radio.
We don't have private property rights in radio.
What do we have?
Communism.
We have the government owns all the frequencies in the air and they decide who's allowed to get what.
Yes.
And I think this is also the reason for the, quote, media bias.
If you've ever noticed, all media will, quote, criticize the government.
They criticize it for not going far enough in destroying our freedom.
You know, the media reports I see on the TSA, they're not.
People don't report on TSA nearly as much as I wish they would.
But when they do, this theme is never the TSA has gone too far.
It's always the TSA needs more money.
The TSA needs to do this further thing, this further indignity needs to be visited on passengers.
The TSA ought to be doing this other thing as well.
It's always a call for more and more and more government.
Right, are we safe enough?
Next, after the commercial break, we'll come back and show you the brand new x-ray machines where the goofball ninth grade dropout who just got off probation is going to be looking at your family naked.
Yes, yes.
And you know, from a health aspect, I was amazed there wasn't any outcry about that.
You know, I've talked to some doctors about this.
They unilaterally tell me, this is really dangerous.
You're going to have pregnant women who don't realize they're pregnant yet walking through these machines, and they're going to give birth to babies with defects.
And where is the outrage?
Where is the mainstream media that's always so fast to jump on any private corporation that markets something like this?
Where is the outrage from them now that the TSA wants to irradiate every single passenger in the United States every time they fly?
There just isn't any.
Wow.
Well, you know, it sounds kind of hyperbolic, but I do think it's time for serious people to start seriously considering packing up their stuff and leaving America before it's too late.
We are headed over a cliff here in terms of the totalitarian nature of the state's association with the people in this society.
They have got far too much power, and you know, it's funny.
It seems to me like they have so much power that they're not even exercising yet.
Like I'm just sitting around waiting for the other shoe to drop, to tell you the truth.
You know, Scott, that's a fascinating observation because I agree with you entirely.
I've wondered about that, too.
I've just been researching something called the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act.
This stuff has been passed by 44 states, and it basically, it's getting new play now with the Andrew Speaker TB bridegroom case.
But basically, what this thing does is it allows state governors on their own initiatives and at their discretion to declare a health emergency.
Once they do that for 60 days, nobody can appeal it.
Like in other words, the legislature or the state can't say, hey, wait a minute, what are you talking about?
There's nothing wrong.
We don't have a health emergency here.
Once it's done, that's it, and it makes the governor and the state health board dictators.
That's the War Powers Act for the governors.
That's it.
It's like the governor gets to say, I want more power.
You know what?
We have a health emergency.
I need more power.
And that's it.
That's what determines it.
And the National Guard of the state and the cops will be under the jurisdiction of the Public Health Board.
And there are all kinds of other things that kick in then, like quarantines.
They'll have the authority to just seal off whole cities.
They'll have the authority to come into your home and take your computer for security reasons.
They can take your car.
They can take over hospitals and nursing homes because they need them to fight the epidemic or the pandemic or whatever else they've decided is a problem.
The language of this thing is so vague and ambiguous.
We have no rights left.
And I'm sitting here wondering, why, when this is on the books in 44 states, why haven't any of the governors done so?
Because I don't fool myself to even care a fig about liberty.
So since they are all power-hungry tyrants, why don't they do this?
And I'm with you.
It's like, I haven't got an answer to that, but I just think the other shoe is going to drop eventually.
And I'm just kind of waiting for it and thinking, what will it take to do that?
Yeah, they're just biding their time.
And I kind of thought September 11th would be the thing to make the other shoe drop.
And I realized, no, that's just enough to get the boot raised up, ready to drop.
That's the next red alert where we lose all our liberty.
Government learns from all that too.
I mean, I'm sure that the tyrants are sitting there thinking, wow, look at that, 3000 people died and boom, we can grope women across the United States.
And it's like, nobody protested.
Their husbands stood by and watched us feel them up at airports and they didn't say anything.
Yeah, I mean, think of what that tells the government about the next time around.
And you know, when you talk about seizing computers, and we could probably add seizing people's guns and stuff and all this.
I think as long as it happens one house at a time, we'll all just sit back and watch reruns of Dallas SWAT on A&E, the arts and entertainment channel, and love it and you know, eat popcorn and get high and sit back and drink beers and watch cops.
As long as you know, I think the lesson that they learn from the American Revolution is you don't want to give them a Lexington and Concord.
You don't want to come and say, listen, we're coming for all of y'all at once because then people will shoot back.
As long as they just get us one at a time.
They could eventually arrest all 300 million of us under one form or another and probably get it done.
That is, I think you're onto something very crucial there.
Government is very good at dividing and conquering.
Right now they're doing it, for years they've done it with poor minorities.
They've made real scapegoats out of black people and just have made war on that whole culture and that whole race.
They've done the same with, right now they're doing it with immigrants, especially Hispanic immigrants.
They are just scum of the earth.
They come in and they clog up our hospitals and they clog up our schools and they clog up this and that.
Although, have you ever noticed, Sheldon Richman at C points this out, that the only people protesting the influx of immigrants are the government run institutions like schools and hospitals.
So they take off everything, they're taking off after Muslims, Muslims are the ones making war and they're so belligerent and blah, blah, blah.
They just divide and conquer and go after one group at a time and everybody knows that old adage about, I didn't protest when they went after you and then after you and after you and then when they came after me there was nobody left to take my part either.
And that's what we're seeing happening right now.
I heard an interview one time with the former head of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, I guess from back in the day too, from back in the days of Joseph Stalin and he talked about how there were a dozen of them and their job was to go out in the middle of the night, preferably three or four in the morning, they'd kick your door in and take you off and you'd never be seen again.
And how they did this for years and years, every night they would go out and take people.
Sometimes just to make sure, even if they didn't have anybody to take, they just wanted to make sure that people knew somebody disappeared every night to keep people in terror.
And yet he said, look, there were only a dozen or two dozen of us and if just a few days, just on a few different occasions, the people who we came to get, if their neighbors had come outside and helped to try to defend them and heaven forbid even shot a couple of us, it would have been over.
There were only two dozen of us, he said.
And if we were all losing our lives going out there every night taking people in the middle of the night, we'd have just given up, we wouldn't have done it.
And yet we went on with complete impunity for years and years and years.
And he's like 80 years old or something, giving this interview to NPR, explaining himself.
And he said, look, the people of Russia could have stood up against us any time they wanted, but they wouldn't.
That's absolutely right, I've read that a number of places, our own history bears that out because in the decades leading up to the revolution, the outbreak of fighting in 75, the decade prior to that, Americans had had enough and they went around and tarred and feathered government officials.
And if you accepted the position of stamp distributor in 1765, you stood a good chance being tarred and feathered.
Now we think of that as kind of a quaint custom, it wasn't, it was torture.
You had hot tar poured on your body that could cripple you if it hit nerves and muscles, it could blind you if it went in your eyes, it was horrendous as far as leaving burns over whatever part of your body the tar came in touch with, and then pouring feathers over it made you an object of ridicule.
And you would often be forced to march through the streets as your skin is on fire and you know, you're suffering all of this pain.
So this was not something to take lightly, this was serious business.
And if you worked for the government, if you worked for the British government in the colonies in the 17, late 1760s, you pretty much feared for your life.
It's amazing to me that the colonial administrators for the crown never dreamed of going as far as your average cop does, or the TSA goon, or an IRS agent, these guys didn't have nearly that kind of power.
And this is how Americans reacted.
So it's and you're absolutely right, if more of a step I had that same spot when I was watching the video of Monica and her son, and I watched passengers just streaming past.
And I thought, what would happen if they all stopped and surrounded them?
So what are you doing to her?
Why are you harassing her?
I've had that same thought when I see cops pulling motorists over on freeways.
It's like, hey, our taxes paid for these roads, our taxes pay your salaries, leave us alone.
What would happen if every passerby just stopped and surrounded the cop and the person he's picking on?
They'd get shot.
And you know what, you'd see the police state disappear overnight if people would just stand up to it, but they don't.
And you know, eventually, it does become too late to stand up to because your weapons are taken away.
I mean, that's always how police states operate, they just keep encroaching on these freedoms.
And then eventually, they disarm people.
And they're just, you know, at that point, the spirit of freedom is so beaten down, there's nothing left.
And so then they take the guns and nobody protests.
And that's, you know, we were talking earlier about when to leave, that's kind of my benchmarks, like when they start confiscating the weapons, I'm out of here, because at that point, we have no recourse left.
Right.
But see, even then, they'll only come for them one at a time.
Yes, you're right.
They'll never give you a Lexington and Concord.
No.
No, I think you're right about that.
And so that's the thing.
I mean, honestly, literally, if they come and arrest your neighbor, you're not going to know that they're just there for the guns, you don't know exactly what the charge is, you're going to assume that he's probably going to have benefit of a lawyer when he gets taken downtown if they didn't kill him during the raid.
And, and you're probably not going to run outside and, and join a firefight, you know, I mean, I wouldn't.
And you know, there's another real problem here, and that is Americans have been fed this gobbledygook about democracy, and we have the best government on earth, and ours is different.
Yeah, they might torture people in Cuba and China, but our government's different.
And it's like, no, no, government is the same entity anywhere you go in the world is the exact same thing.
It's force, it's brute force applied against everyone who doesn't agree with it and doesn't do what it tells them to do.
The only difference comes in the amount of force that's applied.
And that comes down to opportunity.
If a country is willing to allow Muslims to be whipped on the streets, they will be whipped on the streets.
And if a country is willing to allow women to be whipped on the streets, they will be and if a country is willing to allow branch divisions to be mowed down and turned into firewood, they will be.
And we've seen this in our own country.
Why is it that Americans still seem to think government is a good thing, and it helps me and yes, every other government around the world is dictatorial, but not mine.
Yeah, well, Becky Akers, she's one of the reasons why I love LouRockwell.com so much.
She's got an article up there today, Sippy Cups as WMDs, and she's writing a book about the TSA.
Everybody, I'm sure, listening to this will be awaiting that as eagerly as I will be.
Thank you very much for your time today, Becky, appreciate it.
Thank you, Scott.
