Monday, April 23, 2012

"Dominate. Intimidate. Control." The Official Mantra of The American Police State

It's not unknown on occasion that one dismisses a headline out of hand; the type that fall into the 'don't be silly' category, the 'Freddie Star ate my hamster' kind of thing. Equally it was all too easy to dismiss the alleged motto of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) as just another silly headline.

Can one really be expected to believe that a security organisation, an official agency of a western industrial nation, actually boasts above its portal, the words, "Dominate. Intimidate. Control." Expect or believe what you wish, unfortunately however it appears to be true, a quick search of the web verifying just that.

"Dominate. Intimidate. Control." It's the kind of business model one might borrow from Heir Himmler's organisation, not quite the Gestapo as yet, I suppose that is to come shortly, but for now let us settle for the Ordnungspolizei, the Order Police. A description that fits the TSA rather well I think.

Heinrich Himmler's ultimate aim was to replace the regular police forces of Germany with a combined racial/state protection corps (Staatsschutzkorps) of pure SS units. Local law enforcement would be undertaken by the Allgemeine-SS with the Waffen-SS providing homeland-security and political-police functions.

Homeland Security, now there's a thing, fancy that popping up.

I have read much this morning, after all, there is much written about the TSA; but for ease I shall keep it to a minimum and keep it to three general topics. The first being the original Guardian article, with just two links featured out of the many in the full piece.

The first link deals in the main, with just how intrusive these searches are on the person. For example:

The ACLU maintains an ever-growing database of these indignities, many so graphic they're illegal to broadcast over public airwaves. Actions that violate FCC standards are embraced by the TSA. "Mary in Texas" reported:

The TSA agent used her hands to feel under and between my breasts. She then rammed her hand up into my crotch until it jammed into my pubic bone ... I was touched in the pubic region in between my labia ... She then moved her hand across my pubic region and down the inner part of my upper thigh to the floor. She repeated this procedure on the other side. I was shocked and broke into tears.

A woman named Chris said:

"In the four times she explored the area where my inner thigh met my crotch, she touched my labia each time, and one pass made contact with my clitoris, through two layers of clothing. I told her I felt humiliated, assaulted and abused ... In my work as a nurse, if I did what the TSA did against a patient's will it would be considered assault and battery, and I did not see how the TSA should have different rules."

The second link takes us to what we would like to dismiss as silly, but unfortunately, truth disallows us that privilege. "Dominate. Intimidate. Control." The sorry record of the Transportation Security Administration is just that, a monumental record of a monumental clusterfuck, the TSA.

Of the last, and independent link, I will say a few words below.

The TSA's Mission Creep is Making the US a Police State

The out-of-control Transportation Security Administration is past patdowns at airports – now it's checkpoints and roadblocks
By Jennifer Abel
April 21, 2012

Ever since 2010, when the Transportation Security Administration started requiring that travelers in American airports submit to sexually intrusive gropings based on the apparent anti-terrorism principle that "If we can't feel your nipples, they must be a bomb", the agency's craven apologists have shouted down all constitutional or human rights objections with the mantra "If you don't like it, don't fly!"

This callous disregard for travelers' rights merely paraphrases the words of Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano, who shares, with the president, ultimate responsibility for all TSA travesties since 2009. In November 2010, with the groping policy only a few weeks old, Napolitano dismissed complaints by saying "people [who] want to travel by some other means" have that right. (In other words: if you don't like it, don't fly.)

But now TSA is invading travel by other means, too. No surprise, really: as soon as she established groping in airports, Napolitano expressed her desire to expand TSA jurisdiction over all forms of mass transit. In the past year, TSA's snakelike VIPR (Visual Intermodal Prevention and Response) teams have been slithering into more and more bus and train stations – and even running checkpoints on highways – never in response to actual threats, but apparently more in an attempt to live up to the inspirational motto displayed at the TSA's air marshal training center since the agency's inception: "Dominate. Intimidate. Control." More the Guardian

And lastly, what it is really all about, conditioning and control: .....The transition to a police state will not come about with a dramatic coup d’etat, with battering rams and marauding militia. As we have experienced first-hand in recent years, it will creep in softly, one violation at a time,

VIPR Searches and the American Citizen: 'Dominate. Intimidate. Control.'
By John W. Whitehead
July 05, 2011

“They’re trying to scare the pants off the American people that we need these things... Fear is a commodity and they’re selling it. The more they can sell it, the more we buy into it. When American people are afraid, they will accept anything.”—Kate Hanni, passengers’ rights advocate

“Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government…Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart.”— Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials


.....The transition to a police state will not come about with a dramatic coup d’etat, with battering rams and marauding militia. As we have experienced first-hand in recent years, it will creep in softly, one violation at a time, until suddenly you find yourself being subjected to random patdowns and security sweeps during your morning commute to work or quick trip to the shopping mall.....

.....TSA and VIPR searches also indoctrinate children to accept pat-downs, full-body scans, and the like, as a regular component of the relationship between government and its citizens. In this way, police state tactics will gradually grow in acceptance as simply “the way things are.” A child who has been molested by government officials since before he could read is unlikely to question such activities as an unjustified exercise of authority when an adult.... The Rutherford Institute

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

How about you make it a little more obvious that it's not your article from the very beginning instead of just cutting the article off with a link to the original source.

Anonymous said...

Apologies for the previous comment. I now see that you are merely linking to the quoted article's source. I still think that ending your own article with an an excerpt from another writer's article is a little strange, and is perhaps what led to my confusion.

Himself said...

For your information and future reference.

Standard blogging procedure and layout.

Text full page width, by blog owner.

Text inset, always quoted third party material.

Text double inset, material quoted by third party as part of his standard procedure.

Anonymous said...

DOMINATE. INTIMIDATE. CONTROL: TSA MOTTO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1
HjinY-cDwE