Becky Akers
NewAmerican

"Unless we abolish this vile agency, the TSA will carry its war on Americans from airports, bus stations, and political events to highways, shopping malls, even sidewalks."

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), notorious for groping and ogling naked passengers at checkpoints, has long claimed that its “mission” is “protect[ing] the Nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce.” You may ask how delaying travelers in enormously long lines “ensure[s] freedom of movement”; recall that these same jokers contend as well that their sexual assaults protect us. At least their double-speak and Orwellian “logic” are consistent.

As the TSA’s attacks on travelers escalated in the weeks prior to Thanksgiving, many commentators feared that if the agency prevailed in its molestation, it would extend its abuses everywhere. “If we allow them to implement these procedures in our airports,” an unattributed article at endoftheamericandream.com warned, “pretty soon they will start popping up in subway stations, courthouses, sports stadiums and even at our workplaces.”

Unfortunately, the TSA didn’t wait to see whether we “allowed” it to “implement these procedures” or any others: they’ve been “popping up in subway stations, courthouses, sports stadiums and even at our workplaces” for years now. The agency is remarkably lax about finding terrorists, so lax, in fact, that no one in its employ anywhere at any time has ever ferreted out a single one. But it busily fulfills its “mission” of controlling every mode of transportation — and much, much more. Indeed, cynics who maintain that the agency has nothing to do with security and everything to do with dictatorship would argue it far exceeds that “mission,” the better to teach us serfs who’s in charge.

Since government at one level or another outright owns or heavily subsidizes and regulates virtually all transportation in this country, the TSA encounters little resistance to its malignant growth (aside from turf wars, that is: the local cops it tries to enlist in its efforts disdain the TSA’s unarmed, unprofessional buffoons).

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Stephen Lendman

An earlier article compared the 1950s to today, saying:

It was a different time, good and bad. Elected in 1952, Eisenhower was still president. Unemployment was low. Anyone wanting work found it. Most years the economy grew during a post-WW II expansion. Inflation was low. The average new car cost $1,500, a typical home under $10,000. College was affordable. Harvard's 1952 full year tuition was $600. Four years later it was $1,000 - for a full, two-semester year. During the period, anyone could attend evenings at $5 a course and get a Harvard degree for about $175, astonishing but true.

America was unchallenged economically, its manufacturing base offering high paying/good benefits jobs. Union representation was high. Southern and northern US cities were segregated. They still are, all 1960s civil rights gains lost plus most good jobs and benefits. Alaska and Hawaii additions grew America to 50 states.

The Korean War left an unsettled armistice. Cold War politics settled in. Developing "mutually assured destruction (MAD)" and accommodation prevented WW III. Censure ruined Joe McCarthy, and by May 1957 he was dead at age 48. The CIA's first coup deposed Iran's Mohammad Mosaddegh. A generation of terror followed. A year later, another toppled Guatemala's Jacobo Arbenz Guzman, fueling decades of genocide against its indigenous peoples.

Throughout the decade, few followed Vietnam events, its defeat of France, and America's growing involvement in what became three decades of war. Palestinian Territories weren't occupied, and during the period Israel was young, growing, but mostly out of the news and public mind. Times indeed changed, for the worse, not better, including college tuition costs.

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Khalid Amayreh

An Egyptian army armored personnel carrier patrols the Egyptian
side of the border with the Gaza strip, near the Rafah border cros-
sing in Egypt. (Photo: Associated Press)

Some Israeli officials have voiced surprise at revelations published by Wikileaks showing that the Egyptian military continues to view the apartheid Israeli regime as the primary strategic threat facing Egypt.

This is despite the passage of more than 30 years since the signing of the Camp David peace treaty between the two states in 1979.

According to the revelations, American diplomats have been frustrated as the Egyptian army continued to retain the erstwhile military doctrine which viewed Israel as the enemy.

The US, which is often at Israel's beck and call, has been trying to convince leading Arab states that their enemy is Iran and Sunni Islamist movements, such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, not Israel which committed a virtual genocide in Gaza two years ago and is constantly trying to kill the prospects of Palestinian statehood by keeping up the construction of Jewish colonies on stolen Arab land.

One leaked file quoted an unnamed American diplomat as saying that "the US has sought to interest the Egyptian military into expanding their mission in ways that reflect new regional and transnational security threats, such as piracy, border security and counterterrorism."

However, Egypt reportedly resisted the flagrant American intervention in shaping the Egyptian strategic military doctrine, with one high-ranking Egyptian army commander stressing that Israel was still targeting Egypt in a variety of ways, including having plans for the possible re-occupation of the Sinai Peninsula.

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