"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." ~ 
Any world is an illusion, but within illusion, another world, a better world, seems possible. In the material world, the one we think is real, the divide between the 'left' and 'right' is an artificial one. This divide serves to keep us separate from each other and prevents us from seeing clearly that we in fact have shared interests and a common enemy. A better way to approach economy, politics, culture and society would be to take note of the ways in which our societies are divided horizontally: the interests of the few (the elite) and the many (ordinary people). The elite wants to oppress and exploit the rest of us. In a material sense, they are our enemy. They are working to establish a One World Company, aka a totalitarian New World Order. World government is the last thing ordinary people need. We need free and open communities with equal rights for everyone and a profound respect for the many differences between us. We want freedom rather than security. We want peace, not war. Above all else, we want truth, dignity and justice. ~ The Editor
XML FeedsExcessive Intrusion, Less Security
Charles V. Peña
"The truth is that unless you live in Israel, Iraq, or Afghanistan, a terrorist attack is a rare event. More importantly, terrorism is not an existential threat. Yet policymakers and the media lead us to believe that a terrorist attack – any terrorist attack – would be an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it event."
Chicago’s O’Hare Airport – the nation’s second largest airport and one of the busiest, if not the busiest – is one of several U.S. airports (including Boston’s Logan Airport) that is putting the newest body scanner technology into use. One hundred and fifty new scanners are scheduled to be deployed along with the 40 already being used at 19 airports. In large part, the body scanners are in response to the aborted Christmas underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who smuggled explosives onto Delta Flight 253 from Nigeria via Amsterdam to Detroit. Thankfully, Abdulmutallab didn’t injure anyone except himself – managing to light his pants on fire. If this is the extent of the terrorist threat to America, we should be so lucky.
Not unexpectedly, the hue and cry went up for more and improved security. And body scanners were touted as being able to have prevented Abdulmutallab’s attempted attack by virtue of seeing through his clothing to detect what he was carrying in his underwear.
According to the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause." Admittedly, we gave up our Fourth Amendment rights for airline travel a long time ago by submitting ourselves to metal detectors and carry-on bags to X-ray searches – all done without any probable cause (and something we wouldn’t tolerate as part of our everyday lives).
