Air travel rant #5 website of the month TSA Blog · Wednesday June 18, 2008 by colin newell
Terrorists Evolve. Threats Evolve. Security Must Stay Ahead. You Play A Part.
The TSA Blog deserves a metal for effort, an Oscar for the acting and some kind of of American online literary award for a stunning, brazen and breathtaking piece of fiction.
The TSA Blog is the mouth-piece of the TSA and has voluntarily opened itself up to the wrath of the American traveling public with its open-comment system:
In a blog entry Why is ID important for security? – the readership takes the TSA to a verbal slaughter and it is so stimulating to hear America speak that it gives me shivers…
If the security systems actually worked then there would be no need to check ID. This is just another attempt to control the American people and steal more and more of our rights. We need to take back some more essential liberty.
Wake me up when the TSA actually does something that actually increases airport security! (Although I still stand by the opinion that if someone ever tries to hijack an airplane ever again, every person on that plane will stand up and beat that hijacker into a bloody pulp.)
Too many holes in this feeble attempt to say that it enhances security. Show me just ONE terrorist that you have apprehended. Or maybe you can use the argument that they are scared away.
And on and on and on and on and on – read for yourself
Someone summed it up on the radio today with a new expression: The militarization of the Canadian airspace has led to a dilution of civil liberties and freedom… There are now 3000 Canadians on a no-fly list, for reasons that cannot be explained to them without any opportunity for exemption. Over one million Americans are now on the no-fly list many for the crime of having the same name of someone else on the no-fly list.
Millions of Americans are now eschewing air travel in favor of alternative means of getting around their country – However, fissures are appearing in the economy of travel leading to airline bankruptcies and other similar crises.
And no one knows where this will lead.
Air travel rant #4 way up in the sky in my beautiful balloon · Tuesday June 17, 2008 by colin newell
For those just joining us… who paid for their pleasure or business flights some months ago… relax, the sky is not falling.
For those pricing out that Christmas vacation or trans-continental business trip, hold onto to your in-flight queasy bag real tight because you are going to need it.
Because it is not like the sky is actually falling – it is just that everything about air travel (and I mean everything) is going up, up, up…
Buying your ticket is the easy part.
Thinking of a flight to Calgary from Vancouver? Ok, that is easy.
$300 for starters.
Fuel surcharge? Could be anything from $75 to $300 depending on how far you are going? Baggage? You may by paying $25 and up for each bag in the near future. Toss in a security charge, an airport improvement fee and a wild and cryptic assortment of mystery fees that would take one worried looking travel agent an hour to explain (and that could cost you by the minute if you call the 1-900 help line!)
It is like the perfect storm – a few thousand feet below the stratosphere… somewhere in the jet stream. Except in reality, the real trouble is on the ground – In America… where millions are fed up with the TSA shake-downs, the illogical levels of security and paranoia. 40 million fewer domestic air trips in America in the last 2 years. American visits to Canada are down 65% over the last 2 years. These people are scared to death and are staying at home where they are safe from the bogey man… and the in flight entertainment.
Sigh.
My wife and I just finished paying for our tickets away this Christmas – and we figured it would be ever so slightly more expensive just to be done with it and just buy the freaking Plane… or the airline which might be possible at the rate at which they are sinking…
Bon voyage.
Comment [3]
Big Brother Air travel rant #3 fuel prices surcharges hassles argh · Friday June 6, 2008 by colin newell
If I was an aviation executive, partner, employee or investor in the year 2008, I would not be sleeping much right now.
My seemingly endless nights would be filled with a tedious and unbearable sequence of cold sweats and gut wrenching anxiety attacks.
Because air travel is now approaching a perfect storm of utter chaos.
Guess the written language above (not what it says…) and win a prize!
when you figure it out – e-mail me
Fuel prices could double within the next 12 months.
Air fares now have almost doubled in the last year. Example: I was poking around the internet for some return flights to Portland Oregon from where my wife and I live…
$1600 return for the two of us. For a 300 mile flight.
Granted I had not checked one of my personal favorites – Horizon and Alaska Air… that netted return fares of about 800$ for the 2 of us for a long weekend – not including food or a place to rest our heads.
We are flying to Hawaii this Christmas – and those prices are rising faster than an untethered weather balloon.
And get this. Domestic flights in the U.S. are down 41 million trips… over the last 2 years if I read the report right.
Travel to Canada from the U.S. is down 65% over 2 years ago.
And that was prior to many of the fare increases.
So what was that about?
Well – Americans are sick and tired of the hassle of air travel, sick and tired of the TSA, sick and tired of the presumption of guilt, sick and tired of the shake down, sick and tired of the illogic, sick and tired and frustrated and frightened of speaking up about any of the above for fear of the small room, the bare light bulb and the questioning matron snapping her glove as she/he preens for the strip search.
Americans don’t like to be pushed around – and I witnessed too much of it first hand after 2 years of travel after 9/11… before I became too anxious to travel south of the border… for fear of being one of 700,000 on the FBI’s and Homeland Securities No-Fly list
One of my more dim-witted friends actually said…
“The terrorists have won now haven’t they?”
Uhm. Hello. The terrorists have not won anything. The business of security and the U.S. administration has won the task of scaring the crap out of us and keeping us at home… with our heads semi-permanently buried in the sand.
In North America we have spent billions of dinar securing ourselves from an almost invisible and non-existent threat – remember what I said about the killer bath-tub in an earlier post?
Too many people are not traveling enough. They are not spending money. Airlines are shrinking faster than a wool vest on a hot tumble dry. And those that do travel are being treated like a beleaguered and badgered holiday camp queue for the loo – except in this line-up there are more fees than a chartered bank checking account… and after you stand in a cryptic and endless assembly named, however ironically, platinum, green, blue, or First Class... for an hour and a half, scanned with a chest x-ray’s worth of microwave radiation, berated for trying to sneak on an 8 ounce tube of Colgate tooth gel, forced to drink a sample of your own tepid breast milk, frog marched across a fungi ridden floor while your shoes pile up at the end of a conveyor belt littered with lap-top computers and strangers sweaty overcoats… you are allowed to board your 35 minute flight – packed in a aging steel tube with less breathing room than a Green Day mosh pit.
Airport security teams are now being trained to be piracy police… to poke through your i-Pods, laptops, gidgets and gadgets… without your permission… and god help you if you speak up – which supports my whole point.
Perfect storm.
F*ck. F*uck F*uck F*ckity F*uck.
Comment [4]
U.S. develops yet another tool for abusing civilians #2 · Tuesday June 3, 2008 by colin newell
Colonel Hymes of the Moody Air Force Base in Georgia U.S.A demonstrates the Active Denial System weapon by staging what CBS somewhat oddly called “a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq” — a handful of military volunteers, dressed as civilian protesters, who carried signs saying “peace not war” and threw objects at a small group of soldiers. A series of raygun blasts from half a mile away disrupted their chants and finally sent them running.
Watch the whole video and story and shake your head with me.
I am fully qualified to make this statement: This is no ray-gun. This is a microwave transmitter. Much like the mechanism that works inside a microwave oven, the Active Denial System, uses radio waves to heat peoples skin up – possible side effects include permanent damage to your eyes and changes to your DNA.
Shocked? You should be. Dismayed? I hope so.
Sure, it’s better than bullets. But why are we shooting people in phony wars anyway?
And people who carry signs that say Peace, not War!
We should not be zapping these folks – we should be electing them as leaders.
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