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Don't Fly During Ramadan

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Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#671

Post by mpyne »

jrockway wrote: post #578
jessaustin wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

news.ycombinator.com/leaders may prove enlightening. [EDIT: he really did make this argument, but it seems to have disappeared.] What happened? Did you have a stroke? Are you actually jrockway's brother-in-law, "borrowing" his handle?

I don't understand why everyone is so outraged that I don't think the US is a police state. "Airport security is horrible", so I say to take the train. Have you ever taken the train? The security is not that bad. But instead, I get downvoted to -4 and people accuse me of having a stroke. All I can say is that the hysteria is at an amazingly-high level. I am not sure why I even read TSA-related articles anymore.

I don't think the U.S. is a police state.

But I do think that the answer to someone being mistreated at airport security shouldn't be to "take the train". It is true that the train will probably not have as onerous security requirements, but then that isn't really the point either.

If we put restrictions on a mode of transportation those restrictions should in general be in keeping with some legit governmental goal. "Airport security" does meet this, but I don't think we can say the same for all of the treatment OP actually received.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#672

Post by namenotrequired »

hollerith wrote: post #660
joering2 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about... " It is too expensive and inefficient to follow everyone personally. You can instead shoot a satellite in the space that each second takes high-definition infrared photos of Earth and can pinpoint/track/identify each person by their uniquely located veins/blood packets on their shoulders. See? Khazakhstan v.…

The URL does not support any of the assertions in your comment.

It is also from fox'news'...

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#673

Post by rquantz »

makerops wrote: post #482
jwr wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've a friend who spent a good deal of time recently in Khazakhstan, and she was very amused by my attempts to express my fears of the United States becoming an authoritarian police state. She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about and all these other sorts of issues. And she is right — the US is nowhere near being an authoritarian police state. But it i…

I saw some random headline today, that said something along the lines of "The US is in that awkward position, where we can't fix things within the system anymore, and yet aren't far enough along to start hanging the bastards"

I would love it if you could find this article.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#674

Post by moocowduckquack »

Doches wrote: post #656
will_ wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The racist overtones are also scary.

Personally I find the racist overtones to be the least scary aspect of this story. I grew up in rural Texas; for police/government officials to conduct their work with a base level of racism is, while frustrating and sickening, pretty much to be expected. Kafka-esque detention, authoritarian abuse of power, and the hinted-at FBI search of the OP's apartment scare me a lot more. Hell, casual racism is basically an (aw…

"Unreasonable search and seizure most emphatically isn't."

Anyone who has been investigated for a DWB might disagree.

Casual racism and unreasonable search and seizure have been pretty consistently tied together as a common standard in policing, not just in the U.S, but across the world. There is something in the way that police organisations operate that makes them particularly susceptible to treating racist stereotypes as probable cause.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#675

Post by seanmcdirmid »

gsnedders wrote: post #603
omegant wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It´s just the security girl that checks your ticket before you go with your bags through the bag cleareance (that happens before you check in). If you don´t know what´s happening you don´t notice it. In fact Ben Gurion airport has one of the fastest and least unpleasent security screening I´ve seen, while being at the same time maybe the most secure. Security people is very pleasent, even when they stop you for quest…

The British at what airport? There is no singular organization who carries out the security, and different airports subcontract the work to different companies. In general, my experience in the UK has been comparable to the rest of Europe.

4 hour immigration lines at Heathrow are normal for the rest of Europe? Schiphol is about 30 minutes. I am never flying in to Heathrow again, if I can avoid it.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#676

Post by yourapostasy »

makerops wrote: post #482
jwr wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've a friend who spent a good deal of time recently in Khazakhstan, and she was very amused by my attempts to express my fears of the United States becoming an authoritarian police state. She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about and all these other sorts of issues. And she is right — the US is nowhere near being an authoritarian police state. But it i…

I saw some random headline today, that said something along the lines of "The US is in that awkward position, where we can't fix things within the system anymore, and yet aren't far enough along to start hanging the bastards"

That paraphrases Claire Wolfe's quote:

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." – 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution (1996)

She is a well-known libertarian writer, though she seems to have unplugged in the past few years. She has a Wikipedia article for more details.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Wolfe

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#677

Post by belorn »

jwr wrote: post #177
angersock wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've a friend who spent a good deal of time recently in Khazakhstan, and she was very amused by my attempts to express my fears of the United States becoming an authoritarian police state. She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about and all these other sorts of issues. The distressing thing is that we've been putting so much machinery into place, and gotten…

> I've a friend who spent a good deal of time recently in Khazakhstan, and she was very amused by my attempts to express my fears of the United States becoming an authoritarian police state. She laughed and said that no, I did not understand what it was to have secret police following you about and all these other sorts of issues. And she is right — the US is nowhere near being an authoritarian police state. But it i…

If the US is nowhere near being an authoritarian police state, at what point will US become a authoritarian police state?

When they have kill lists without any trial, jury or judge?

When they keep prisoners in jail indefinitely without a trial?

When they torture prisoners?

When state officials lie to the public?

When state officials lie to public representatives?

When the secret police interfere with lawyers communications and interferes with legal cases?

When the secret police silence individuals that want to inform about abuse?

When the secret police use surveillance for blackmailing?

When the state use strip searches and surveillance indiscriminately against the population, including children?

When the state implement state censorship?

When they use force against peaceful demonstrators?

When they utilize military resources against peaceful demonstrators?

When they seize bank assets without any trial, any intention of a trial, or even without ever formally serving the individual with criminal papers?

Please state what criteria we should use, so we can have a final definition of what an authoritarian police state is.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#678

Post by marvin »

kareemm wrote: post #618
lotyrin wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chemical detection doesn't even get used except under "random" search. There are so many chemicals to test for, and so many of them have other common uses that using chemical tests as a proxy for malicious intent has poor accuracy. Even assuming tests are extremely accurate, false positive rates would still massively exceed the incidence of threats. What you look like will greatly increase your odds of being "randoml…

It wasn't a "random" search. Any time you opt out of the millimeter wave scanner, you get a hand pat-down and your baggage is swabbed for explosives.

Even the "random" searches (the ones that start with "you have been selected for a random search") are rarely random.

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#679

Post by ncallaway »

laureny wrote: post #517
616c wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who was in a fraternity in college that practiced a waterboarding procedure as part of the initiation process, around our time in Iraq, I have come to never accept torture as someone who experienced one of the basic methods. So, go ahead, try it. Call me a troll but you should check your moral compass. Do not argue for the torture, psychological or physical, of others if you cannot hack or attempt to at le…

> Call me a troll but you should check your moral compass. Do not argue for the torture, psychological or physical, of others if you cannot hack or attempt to at least once. That's a weird line of reasoning. For example, according to you, I shouldn't have an opinion on death penalty unless I'm willing to see what it does? Besides, the debate is not whether torture hurts the victim or not: everybody on either side of…

> Surely I can have an opinion on this without having to lie down and have gallons of water poured into my mouth through a cloth?

You certainly are entitled to having an opinion on anything. Personally, on topics such as water-boarding, I will lend much greater credence to someone that has experienced water-boarding.

> the debate is not whether torture hurts the victim or not: everybody on either side of that fence knows that it does. The question is: is torture ever justified?

To determine whether torture is justified you need to know both the costs, and the benefits. It's far too simplistic to say the "cost" of torture is that "it hurts the victim". Pain isn't a binary condition. How much pain is being inflicted? For how long? Is it permanent? Is the psychological trauma of the fear of death part of the calculation?

I won't go so far as 616c as saying "Don't argue for it", but I will say "Expect a less serious consideration of your arguments from me".

Re: Don't Fly During Ramadan

#680

Post by greedo »

laureny wrote: post #500
enraged_camel wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Anyway, I look at this like the lottery, but in reverse. Sometimes you lose the reverse lottery and a day of your life gets fucked up. But ultimately, life moves on and you have an interesting story. You can say that the government is an oppressive regime that is out to get you for your political views, or you can say you rolled the dice and lost. The view you have expressed here demonstrates that you have literall…

> It is not a "lottery" when the TSA and their goons are profiling people based on race In this story, they were profiling based on the fact that the person set off explosive detectors. Repeatedly. The fact that he was later questioned by tactless people making veiled racial hints doesn't change the fact that he wasn't racially profiled. A Caucasian would have been detained just the same.

Though you may call them explosive detectors, they aren't. They're chemical detectors, specifically mass spectrometers. All they can do is detect chemicals, and they obviously can't tell the difference between some common chemicals and a true explosive device.
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