12/02/09 – Becky Akers – The Scott Horton Show

Hi folks, welcome to the show.
It's Antiwar Radio on Chaos 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas.
We're also streaming live worldwide on the internet at ChaosRadioAustin.org and at Antiwar.com slash radio.
And I'm happy to welcome back to the show, for the first time in quite a while, good old Becky Akers from LewRockwell.com.
Welcome to the show, Becky.
How are you doing?
Well, I'm fine, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
And you write for the New American sometimes now too, right?
I have a weekly column at the New American website, yes, and sometimes write for the magazine and good people over there.
That's great.
Yeah, you keep those right-wingers libertarian, Becky.
I try.
All right.
Well, so you know what I hate?
What do you hate?
The TSA.
Yes.
Oh boy, don't we all.
Man, I got to tell you, I took a trip across the continent to the other side of it to give a talk and then back again, and of course had to stop a couple of places and what have you.
And boy, it was dehumanizing like being in prison.
I hate them.
I hate them.
I hate them so much.
Becky, could you share with the audience reasons why you think they might ought to hate the TSA?
Well, first of all, I assume all of us have a real problem with government agents seeing us naked, and that is what the TSA is now all about.
I mean, it used to be that it was about other things as well, but it is pretty much concentrating its efforts now on getting millimeter wave scanners into every single airport so that every single passenger on every single flight will pass through these things, and they basically provide a graphic image of your naked body through your clothing.
You don't have to undress.
These machines do it for you.
A TSA officer is sitting watching the monitor so he can see your naked body.
This is supposed to stop terrorism.
To me, it sounds like just another way for a bunch of pedophiles and perverts that the TSA employs to get their rocks off, and this is just outrageous.
Yeah, but what about safety?
I mean, I saw in a movie one time that you can make a gun out of porcelain and smuggle it through.
Yeah, well, that's their whole point.
I'm not sure that you can do stuff like this.
I think the TSA probably watches the same movies you do, Scott, and they take them literally and think, oh, gee, I guess they may, because you know the Supreme Court watches 24 and so does the CIA, and they take the tactics from it.
Yeah, everybody knows Kiefer Sutherland saved L.A. from a nuclear bomb one time.
There we go, there we go.
So the TSA pretty much is, I guess, doing the same thing.
I keep waiting for there to be organized resistance to this.
I keep waiting for it.
You know, I'm a devout Christian.
I keep waiting for my fellow Christians to come forward from any denomination.
I'm not picky.
Roman Catholic, Baptist, I don't care.
Just somebody come forward, a man of the cloth, and stand up against this obscenity and say, you cannot look at my wife naked because she's taking a flight.
The only person who's done this so far is a representative, Jason Chaffetz, or Chaffetz, I'm not sure how to pronounce his name, from Utah, and he had a run-in with the TSA after this, so perhaps that's why more people aren't standing up to protest this.
But we have really passed the point of no return as far as reaching a totalitarian regime when the government can be looking at us naked and there is very little outcry about it.
Yeah, well, you know, even aside from the new machines, which the ones you're talking about here, the millimeter something or other.
Yeah, millimeter wave scanners.
Millimeter wave scanners, nice.
Even in airports that don't have those.
Right.
The whole process is basically, it seems like it's an exercise in what they would call making you feel safe, but it seems to me an exercise in making you used to the idea of basically standing in line there like a first grader whose class is in trouble and you're supposed to be dead quiet and stare at your socks because you've taken your shoes off.
And it's, you know, forget organized resistance.
I would kill just for a little bit of passive resistance in the line, just a little bit of making these people's day difficult.
And people won't even do that.
Everybody's looking at me like, hey, be quiet.
You're going to get us all in trouble.
Yes, yes.
Well, I think you've raised an interesting analogy there as though we're all in school.
I think that's what's going on is the public schools didn't quite beat out all of our independence and our feistiness.
And so the TSA is there to finish the job.
And that is basically what's going on.
TSA will tell you that it's there to protect us all, but I'm agreeing with you, Scott.
I don't think it is.
I think it's there to train Americans to kowtow to their rulers, do as you are told.
I am always amused at the outlandish nonsense the TSA comes up with, take off your shoes.
Now, who would ever have predicted that?
And who would predict that Americans who basically are a practical people and won't tolerate a lot of baloney, that Americans would simply docilely go along with this?
I keep wondering, as long as the government tells us this will protect us, is there anything Americans won't do?
Now they're standing by while their children are going through strip search machines that are showing strangers their naked bodies.
Is there anything Americans will protest that their government does?
No.
When they steal 50, 60, 70% of our money in taxes, do we protest then?
I'm wondering if the TSA says that they have to start primus noctus again to let you on your flight.
Are we going to protest that?
Is that where the king gets your bride on your wedding night first?
Yeah, that would be it.
See, your brain is just like mine.
I was only making that complaint out loud the other day to a friend of mine, that really at this point, why not?
I mean, seriously, and in fact, it could just be the deputy sheriff, right?
It wouldn't even have to be his high and mighty emperor up there in the Oval Office.
It could be any government employee has a right to your girlfriend whenever he feels like it, and what would Americans do about it?
Nothing.
They'd say, oh, okay, I guess if that's the way it is now.
You know, everything changed on 9-11, and as long as they protect me, I don't care.
I do have some good news on this, though, however, Scott.
I have noticed a real sea change in the public's attitude towards the TSA in the time I've been covering it.
It used to be I would read news stories about the TSA, and this wasn't that long ago, three or four years ago, and most of the reader comments, if not all of them, were basically, I'm glad they're out there protecting us.
These people are fine patriots.
Give them more power and more money.
You know, as long as they keep Osama off my plane, they can do anything they want to.
Now it is completely reversed.
I very rarely see those kind of comments anywhere anymore, and if they are made, usually it's somebody who works for the TSA and is stupid enough to say so in his comment.
You know, I work for the TSA, and I can tell you, we're doing a really good job.
You know, this is the level we're dealing with at the TSA.
Well, you know, what's really important here, too, is it's not just that they treat everybody like kindergartners in line.
It's that for people who really talk back to them, I guess, you know, I push the limit as far as I can, but then I want to make my flight, too.
Yes, exactly.
But, you know, I remember, in fact, even from the very beginning, 5.50 a.m. in San Antonio would do a lot of good coverage of the TSA from 2001-2002 when it was brand new, and they would focus a lot on the draconian punishments.
Yes.
For if anybody actually really crosses these people in a way that gets them prosecuted, they're facing incredible fines and prison time for basically nothing.
Yes.
And remember also the case of Phyllis Dittenfoss, who was a schoolteacher in Wisconsin who fought back when a TSA screener molested her.
This woman was groping Phyllis, and Phyllis told her to quit, and she didn't listen, and so Phyllis groped her back and said, how do you like that yourself?
Phyllis was arrested, tried, and prosecuted for this, and a jury convicted her.
Oh, yeah, you've got to remember that.
Right away.
What was her sentence?
Do you remember?
She could have been sentenced to a year in prison, and I think it was a $100,000 fine.
I might be wrong on that.
The judge actually sentenced her to community service of, I think, two years, and I forget how much in fines, like $1,500 in fines, something like that.
He did not send her to jail.
But, you know, the threat, this woman's life was completely destroyed.
She was a retired schoolteacher.
She had never been in any trouble at all before.
She served as a very graphic warning to everyone.
This is what we will do if you stand up.
Now, remember, she was defending herself.
It's not like she did something.
It's not like she walked up to a TSA officer and slugged her in the mouth or something.
She was defending herself from sexual assault, and she was arrested for this, and the lesson is very clear.
We can do anything we want to you, and if you don't like that, then don't fly.
I don't like it, so I don't fly.
I feel very, very sorry for folks like you, Scott, that don't have a choice and must get on a plane or your job is, you know, toast.
But I would caution anyone who does not absolutely have to fly to stay off planes because in addition to all its unconstitutionality and tyranny, the TSA is also an extremely dangerous organization.
It ruins lives like it did with Phyllis.
It's also killed passengers.
So you are very much taking your life in your hands when you go to an airport, and it's not because of terrorists.
Right.
Well, you know, I always do the counterfactual, too, because I voted for Harry Brown in the year 2000, and if he had won, probably there wouldn't have been a September 11th attack at all because all aid to Israel would have been cut off and our troops would already have left the Arabian Peninsula before September rolled around.
But even if September 11th had happened during Harry Brown administration, the way he would have played it, being that he actually was a real man and actually knew a little something about the history of the United States and the Constitution and what it's all supposed to mean.
Remember his great Statue of Liberty speech he'd always give?
And so rather than telling the American people, okay, lie prone like a dog and be afraid and do what I say, he would have come out and he would have said, let the word go out, all right, and let the heroes of Flight 93 serve as an example that if your plane is hijacked, they do not want to go to Cuba.
They want to crash the plane into something, and it's your job as a free man or woman in American society to kill them.
Don't let anyone hijack your plane.
If they try to, do what you have to do in order to not allow that.
By the way, we're going to keep the doors locked to the cockpit from now on and whatever.
Don't be afraid.
Be a man.
Do what's right.
Protect yourself and you didn't need a TSA at all.
You didn't need even an Office of Homeland Security, much less a Department of Homeland Security.
Listen, if somebody's trying to terrorize you, kill them.
Well, you know, it's an interesting thing to think about the fact that 9-11 was very much the responsibility of the U.S. government.
It caused it by its Middle East policies.
If we're going to accept the story that the 19 Saudi Arabian guys did in fact crash these planes, you know, I don't know enough about physics and chemistry to judge all the 9-11 conspiracy theories that are out there.
But I will say I don't trust anything the government says.
And the fact that this is their official story, that Saudi Arabian guys, actually they don't ever emphasize that, but that 19 terrorists got on planes and crashed them, I'm going to say that the government lies on everything all the time.
They may be lying about this.
But if we accept that story, we get down to the fact that the U.S. government caused this, as you mentioned, by its Middle East interference, and then it exacerbated the problem because the way that the flight crews and the passengers reacted on the planes on 9-11 was dictated by the FAA.
And that's something that everyone needs to understand.
The government has controlled American aviation for decades now.
TSA just brought a lot of that control out into the open.
But that's one reason why aviation has always been such an arduous industry and why passengers have been treated like crap for years, because the government controlled so much of it.
Government regulated prices.
It's really a riot when you look back at the deregulation of the late 1970s.
Basically what the government did was remove a couple of regulations and put in 15 more.
So just, you know, anytime people start on how the private market in aviation failed because they didn't protect us from 9-11, no, the government failed.
Well, you know, George Carlin had a bit that I think came out in like the year 2000 or something about airline security and what a joke it was and how it was all just to make middle-class white people feel safe and how, hey, they haven't found a single bomb ever.
They never stopped a single terrorist from getting on a plane a single time, 9-11 included.
Here's a picture of Mohamed Atal walking right through security.
He's got no gun, so why stop him?
And, you know, to this day, airline security, they didn't stop Richard Reed.
It was passengers on the plane who stopped Richard Reed.
And to this day, you think of all the cases, and I know you've written about pretty much every time this happens.
You think of all the times that an entire section of the airport had to go back through security, entire planes unloaded and reloaded and, you know, people missing loved ones' funerals and all this, you know, most terrible things happening from people missing their flights over bogus nonsense, and yet there hasn't been a single terrorist caught by the TSA ever, by any airport security ever, not in this country, has there?
That's right.
They have not caught a single person.
And in the absence of actual terrorists, they try to turn you and me into terrorists.
So that's what's going on with all these bogus alarms and everything.
Oh, you forgot and left a shampoo bottle in your trunk.
Well, you must be a terrorist.
You're trying to sneak things through our checkpoint, aren't you?
Well, off to the jail with you.
Yeah.
And that's basically what's going on.
Well, look, and that's not even a figurative thing because, you know, about turning us into terrorists.
No.
Because, in fact, when I got back to LAX on my recent trip, then I had to take the little airport shuttle to where I left my truck, and the other guy, the other passenger on the airport shuttle was a TSA guy, a black guy about, say, 60 years old, something like that.
And I says to him, hey, you know, are you off duty?
And he said, no.
And I said, oh, well, never mind.
I was going to ask you a personal question.
He said, no, go ahead.
So I said, this is nonsense.
This is terrible.
This is like East Germany, and what you're doing is wrong, and you should quit your job, and all those other people should quit their job, and Americans are right to hate your guts because this is not right.
How do you like that?
You know, something like that.
And he justified all of it by saying, you could be a terrorist.
Look at Timothy McVeigh.
And I said, well, actually, you're more like Timothy McVeigh than me.
I've never worked for the government.
Oh, excellent.
You know, you're the one who's a federal government employee, not me, you know.
Come on, as long as we're being realistic here.
Maybe I'm an angry white guy, but you're a government employee.
Which one is more like McVeigh, you know?
And the idea that, oh, and, you know, the thing I was picking on him for was, you know, putting the lady, putting the stroller through the X-ray thing, taking the kid out of the stroller to put it through.
This is ridiculous.
We all know it's ridiculous.
He says, well, you know, we have to change it up all the time so that the terrorists don't get an eye for it.
Oh, they don't put strollers through.
And then from because they do dry runs, you could be a terrorist on a dry run right now.
And he went back to that thing about I could be a terrorist.
Yeah.
Even though, you know, as far as, you know, the establishment ought to be concerned.
I got no reason to complain.
All I ever complained about is injustices that they put upon other people, not my own thing.
You know what I mean?
Right.
You know, as far as as far as they're concerned, I'm a healthy, happy white guy with every advantage.
And why would I be a terrorist?
But, no, I could be a terrorist, too.
So, therefore, as you said, because there are no real terrorists around.
So we just have to treat every kid in a stroller like they might be one, too.
Remember that the TSA gobbles $7 billion in taxes every year.
So it has to have a lot of Sturm und Drang to justify all that, to make us think things are really bad out there.
But as I said before, a lot of people are catching on.
A lot of people now are realizing this is all just a hilarious charade, although it does ruin lives.
And what we need to do, I think probably our most effective fight against the TSA is I don't think we'll accomplish anything confronting them directly, although I'm very happy if you want to continue doing that.
That's great.
But I think more effective may be just when you encounter somebody who is sitting there saying the TSA is great.
It protects us.
Tell them it doesn't.
Try to persuade that person to see what's really going on, that the TSA is a far greater threat to us than any terrorist ever could be.
Because we interact with the TSA 2 million times a day.
2 million daily passengers are going through the TSA's hell at the airport.
And that is far, far, far more people than were ever affected on 9-11.
Far, far more people than were killed on 9-11.
Every single day the TSA is photographing women and children naked.
It's photographing Muslim men who are extremely modest people by culture, photographing them naked.
I've read some of the testimony from prisoners at Gitmo.
And Muslim men continually say the worst torture to me was not the physical torture.
It was the fact that they constantly disrobed me.
And that's what's going on at the airports now.
Now, wait a minute.
How many actual airports have these installed and what's the deadline for every airport?
Well, TSA just bought 150 new millimeter wave scanners with stimulus money.
You know, I always think of Tom Paine's comment about how government is such an evil.
And here's our consolation.
We also pay for it.
So all of you folks out there who are facing foreclosure, who can't afford to eat out in restaurants anymore, whose kids aren't getting new clothes, realize that your money has been stolen from you to buy the TSA 150 more machines to strip search you at airports.
So eventually the TSA does plan to have these installed at each and every concourse.
Currently, I think by the end of this year they're going to have them in 30 airports.
At this moment they're probably in the mid-20s or so.
And the airports where they are installed, not every gate or concourse has them.
But as I say, for years now, TSA has been planning to do this on every flight.
And I always get amused at the mainstream media that will talk about the TSA as though just recently this has been the plan.
No, these millimeter wave scanners have been in the works since about 2002 when TSA first came on the scene.
And even back then they were talking about them.
And public reaction, they did a test run with them at Orlando International Airport in 2003.
Public reaction was strongly opposed to them.
People just absolutely flat out refused to be strip searched by government agents.
That didn't stop the TSA.
And there's even been a measure pending in Congress now to restrict the use of these things.
We don't need them restricted.
We need them outlawed.
By the way, these are the same machines that are used in prisons.
So you mentioned before, Scott, how being at the airport is like being in prison.
That is very much the mentality of the TSA.
You strip search passengers.
You treat passengers as though they are prisoners.
You compel them to do things that they should never have to do if they want to get where they're going.
You know what really bothers me about this?
What?
Flying is supposed to be fun.
Yeah.
I love flying, especially the takeoff part.
Oh, I used to just adore it.
And, you know, it's possible that the engines could blow out and the thing will crash into cartwheels at the end of the runway.
And that's exciting, too.
I like flying.
I do, too.
It's like a damn roller coaster with a police state on it.
Yes.
It's such a romantic way to travel, being up there above the clouds, seeing God's handiwork, looking at the sun setting on the clouds.
I used to just love that.
I deeply resent the tyranny that has taken that joy away from me and from everybody else.
Well, I very much appreciate your time on the show today.
Thank you, Becky.
Thank you, Scott.
Everybody, that's Becky Akers from lootrockwell.com and the New American Magazine.
We'll be right back.