The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) gropes us and rifles our belongings at airports while robbing us of $7 billion annually. It spends some of that loot on propaganda, whether press releases that the corporate media recycles lest reporters waste time researching and writing their own stories, or a website. The latter featured a column called “Myth Busters” from June 2007 through March 2009. In it, the TSA’s spinners tried to refute whatever bits of truth had escaped the agency’s black hole.

Let’s turn the TSA’s tradition on its head by busting a couple of genuine myths with the truth. The TSA has never endorsed either of these falsehoods, but they are perennially popular among passengers who clamor for something, anything, to rescue them from the agency’s abuse. And they have reappeared with a vengeance after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempt to immolate himself during a flight on Christmas Day. 

The first: profiling can protect us. Proponents argue that “since Muslims took down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, every attack on a commercial airliner has been committed by foreign-born Muslim men with the same hair color, eye color and skin color.” That makes securing aviation very simple: the Feds should “search Muslims” rather than “[harass] infinitely compliant Americans.”

To read the entire article at The New American website, click here.

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (2)

Subscribe to this comment's feed

Show/Hide comments

rprew said:

	Actually, Becky... profiling DOES work. If you limit the profile to "foreign-born Muslim men with the same hair color, eye color and skin color", it will not be very effective. There is more to profiling than that. Also, for profiling to work properly, you don't advertise what the profile is. Proper profiling will never be 100% of the solution, but it sure would cut the problem down to size.
	report abuse vote down vote up

January 15, 2010
Votes: +4

DDW said:

	But Wouldn't there be the danger that it might actually work? And isn't it easier for the bully/punk/thug types that are employed by TSA, and other government agencies, to push around private, tax-paying citizens than to actually confront, grapple, and subdue someone who might really be dangerous?
	report abuse vote down vote up

January 15, 2010
Votes: +5