Fear and loathing at Phoenix Sky Harbor

Find out just what the people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

~Frederick Douglass (1817-1895),
American Abolitionist

I recall a day long ago, before we slipped into our bizarre post-9/11 mindset, when you could arrive at the airport just a half hour before your flight left. Only time it took longer was over the holidays.

A couple weeks ago, I flew to Detroit to see my mom in Toledo, Ohio, for a few days. The following is an account of my experience prior to departing Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

— • —

Arrived at 7 a.m. Checked in, no problem. Went to the rest room, then headed toward the cattle chute.

Not too busy. Just a family in front of me, some of whom spoke English and were translating for other family members who didn't. I saw some passports out so I gathered they were taking an international flight. I think the other language I heard was Italian — sounded something like Spanish, but not quite.

One young woman in the party was helping an elderly lady, probably her grandma, with her bag. The rest of their party were up at a podium speaking to the TSA guy who was checking their papers. He was yawning, not saying anything. Looked as if he might have had a late night — shirt wrinkled, hair mussed up. I heard him direct them to Station Four. They'd started to head over when Mr. Jackboot shouted at the young girl (who was maybe 19 or 20) and the old lady, "Keep up! You need to stay with your party! Over to Station Four now!"

Well, I was next in line, and I noticed there were actually two TSA guys, at podiums maybe ten feet apart. The other one wasn't doing anything, so I headed toward him, only to hear a curt, "I'm closed — over there." He pointed me back to the other guy. (TSA: "Thousands Standing Around".)

Bracing myself, I went over to him, ticket and photo ID out and ready. He looked at it, handed it back and said, "Station Two." From where I was standing, I couldn't read the numbers above the various stations, so I backed up to see where Two was. Got it — last station on the left.

I began to head over to it, and there was a large concrete pillar in my way. I made to go around it on the right, as there was a bit of a hold-up on the left involving a lady in a wheel chair. As I attempted to go around, another TSA guy at a desk (don't know what his job was — he wasn't checking IDs or anything) barked out, "Don't go through here! Other side of the pillar!" No "please," no attempt at kindness. He sounded annoyed. (Hey, maybe that is his job — keeping people from walking around the wrong side of the pillar!) I did as he said, muttering "jackboot" under my breath — he didn't hear me. (The P.A. guy was droning on about something, and it was really loud.)

Made my way to Station Two. There was one couple ahead of me, retirement age, nicely dressed. I heard him speak with a British accent. I put my coat, daypack and shoes in the bin, placed the bin on the conveyor, and stepped through the metal detector — no problems. Waiting at the end of the conveyor for my stuff, I noticed the lady ahead of me — the other half of the British-sounding couple — was agitated. She was talking to the TSA gal, who was examining her bottled water. It was still sealed — a small bottle, about 16 ounces. Heard the passenger explain that she has to drink water every hour due to a medical condition. Her husband broke in: "We called the TSA last night, and they said it would be alright."

But it was a no go. Miss Jackieboot said she'd have to go back out of security and drink the water back there. (Question for Kip Hawley and the rest of the TSA idiots: Why not simply have her break the seal and take a healthy swig to verify that the bottle does not, in fact, contain a chemical component that could be used in a — ahem — "binary liquid bomb"?) The lady said she couldn't drink it all at once. Then her husband asked, "Can we purchase water past this point?" The TSA gal said yes, so the lady said, "Just bin that one, then. I'll purchase another." They were clearly annoyed. I felt badly for them.

Meanwhile, another gal at the x-ray machine had my bag, looking intently at its image on the screen. (Could she read my book titles?!) She called a supervisor over, and both viewed the image, consulting a small spiral-bound notebook. She told me she'd have to run the bag through again. I put on my shoes and took my coat. She scanned the bag a second time and made a few notes on a paper I couldn't see. Then she ran it through a for a third time.

By then there was quite a line behind me, and a bit of panic began to rise within me — what the hell was she looking for? She made a few more notes, still looking at her small spiral notebook, then gave me my bag.

Whew! I couldn't believe how nervous I was getting! I had a few books with me and some choice articles printed off the Internet — figured they'd come in handy for conversations with my old friend Connie, whom I hadn't seen in several years. I suppose the "authoritahs" — not to mention the current regime — might not like my choice of reading material: Chris Hedges' War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning ... Michael Scheuer's Through Our Enemies' Eyes ... and Iraqi bloggerette "Riverbend's" second Baghdad Burning compilation.

But as far as I know, the First Amendment still applies, even to us hapless folk who have to fly on airplanes. Still, I'd love to know just what the TSA lady was writing down about my daypack.

When I caught up with the couple who was in front of me, they were purchasing another bottled water. I told them I sympathized totally, and we mused how awful it is to fly anymore, at least in the US and UK. The couple turned out to be Swiss citizens, headed for home.

I told them I hoped they could keep their republic, and how inspiring the Swiss were to me personally. And how, sadly, we had lost our republic and were descending rapidly into a police state. They nodded, and the gentleman said, "America is not what it once was. So much has changed since 9/11, and not for the better."

The Bourne-Moby-Voldemort Identity

Just saw The Bourne Ultimatum yesterday.

On the plus-side: A fun, action-packed summertime popcorn thriller ... with a moral:

Never volunteer to be a remorseless, unquestioning killer for the State.

In the minus column: Gratuitous overuse of the "shaky-cam." You want to communicate to your viewers the chaos and disorientation that attend (I imagine) a man-to-man fight-to-the-death with an equally-trained and even more remorseless killer? Okay, fine. Shake away.

But in a quiet, subdued, face-to-face meeting in a café between a newspaper reporter and his mysterious insider source? C'mon ...

But I digress.

Each of the three films ends with the same song, "Extreme Ways," by a fellow named Moby. Since I'm a certified "credidiot" (one of those people you see in theatres sitting all the way through the final credits), I tried to pay attention to the lyrics this time. What I heard intrigued me, so I looked 'em up on-line.

Wow. In the context of the Bourne films, Moby's lyrics sure seem to express the lament of a remorseless, unquestioning killer for the State.

"So, just who is this Moby?" I wondered. So I went to his website. Where I read the following post in his journal:

i was just in washington dc for a day, and while there i was wearing my 'republicans for voldemort' t-shirt.

granted it's a fairly subtle literary reference (as the harry potter books have only sold, i believe, 300 million copies, and the movies have only been seen by a billion people or so), but i'm still surprised at how many people respond to the t-shirt as if i were really endorsing a republican candidate named voldemort.

every now and then someone will stop me and say 'your t-shirt is very funny, where'd you get it?', but more often than not i get dirty looks from democrats ('boo, hiss, dirty republican') and approving looks from republicans ('yahoo! another member of the cabal!').

but this isn't about politics, it's about my excellent t-shirt (and no, i don't remember where it came from. i think that someone might've given it to me in a bar?) and how surprising it is that the vast majority of americans seem to be unfamiliar with the central antagonist in the most successful book franchise of all time.

isn't that surprising?

i think it's surprising.

maybe if the t-shirt didn't look so authentic. ...

What a hoot! Pulling one over (quite unintentionally) on both Republicans and Dems, both sides thinking he's supporting a GOP candidate named Voldemort!

Just Warriors ~ Just Wars

Just Warriors ~ Just Wars is my new weblog, dedicated to a biblical consideration of war and the waging of war. Anticipated topics:

• foreign policy
• principles of national defense
• raisng, training and equipping an army
• conscription
• individual ethics in war
• Just War doctrine
• international law

... etc. & so forth.

As a Christian, it is my view that God is the final measure of justice, and that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are given to man by inspiration of God to teach us, among other things, how to do justice and live justly — whether in peace or in war.

I invite you join in the discussion.

Benson on the Pat Tillman cover-up

Steve Benson's editorial cartoon from the 2 August 2007 Arizona Republic:

Which kinda makes me wonder: If they did it to Pat Tillman and his family, how many others have they done it to?

The pornography of violence

War is also the pornography of violence. It has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it "the lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War allows us to engage in lusts and passions we keep hidden in the deepest, most private interiors of our fantasy life. It allows us to destroy not only things but human beings. In that moment of wholesale destruction, we wield the power [of] the divine, the power to revoke another person's charter to live on this earth. The frenzy of this destruction — and when unit discipline breaks down, or there was no unit discipline to begin with, frenzy is the right word — sees armed bands crazed by the poisonous elixir our power to bring about the obliteration of others delivers. All things, including human beings, become objects — objects to either gratify or destroy or both. Almost no one is immune. The contagion of the crowd sees to that. ...

It takes little in wartime to turn ordinary men into killers. Most give themselves willingly to the seduction of unlimited power to destroy, and all feel the peer pressure to conform. Few, once in battle, find the strength to resist. Physical courage is common on a battlefield. Moral courage is not.

~ Chris Hedges, "The Death Mask of War"

Harry Potter: How bureaucracy enables tyranny

Hermione gave a shaky laugh ... "What's Voldemort planning for Hogwarts?" she asked Lupin.

"Attendance is now compulsory for every young witch and wizard," he replied. "That was announced yesterday. It's a change, because it was never obligatory before. Of course, nearly every witch and wizard in Britain has been educated at Hogwarts, but their parents had the right to teach them at home or send them abroad if they preferred. This way, Voldemort will have the whole Wizarding population under his eye from a young age."

~ Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows, p. 210

In his essay "Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy," law professor Benjamin Barton examines what the Harry Potter series has to say about government and bureaucracy. (After reading the abstract, scroll down to the bottom to download Barton's 21-page .pdf essay.)

Barton got me thinking about the power of ideas, especially among young people. Witness the popularity of Ron Paul's freedom message among the 18-25 year-old crowd — many of whom grew up reading Harry Potter.

Will we get fooled again?

It seems to me that the U.S. is spoiling for a fight with Iran. Allegations have been made for what seems to be the better part of a year that Iran is in violation of a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. And of course, there is the more recent charge that the government of Iran is supporting the Iraqi insurgency — i.e., killing American soldiers — with training, men and arms.

After the "justifications" for our invasion of Iraq — WMD threats, unmanned chemical-weapons drones able to attack Europe in 45 minutes, mushroom clouds, links to 9/11 via al Quaida and Osama Bin Laden, yellow-cake uranium, aluminum tubes etc. — turned out to be bogus, you'll excuse me if I don't just readily accept these latest neo-con saber-rattlings at face value.

Indeed, I recently read what appears to be a quite plausible challenge to the now-standard claim that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is threatening to "wipe Israel off the map." (Why anybody thinks that a militarily adept and nuclear-armed Israel is somehow unable to defend herself against possible Iranian aggression and thus in need of U.S. interposition is a discussion for another time.)

In his 26 May 2007 essay "'Wiped off the Map' – The Rumor of the Century," Arash Norouzi goes into much detail in order to show that Ahmadinejad's supposed threat against Israel was actually a mis-translation into English of Ahmadinejad, in a 2005 conference called "The World Without Zionism," quoting an old observation by the Ayatollah Khomenei. Norouzi also puts Khomenei's statement — and Ahmadinejad's use of it — back into the original context from which it has been torn:

Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America's powerful grip on [Palestine] via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:

1. The Shah of Iran – the U.S. installed monarch
2. The Soviet Union
3. Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein

In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini's own words foretelling that individual regime's demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini's unfulfilled wish: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise." This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war [Norouzi's italics — F.G.].

Stating that the "regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time" is certainly not the same as threatening to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth."

The alleged mistranslation of Ahmadinejad's 2005 quote from an old speech by the Ayatollah Khomenei has been discussed at least a year ago, by Juan Cole in May 2006:

Ahmadinejad was not making a threat, he was quoting a saying of Khomeini and urging that pro-Palestinian activists in Iran not give up hope — that the occupation of Jerusalem was no more a continued inevitability than had been the hegemony of the Shah's government.

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that "Israel must be wiped off the map" with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

Note that neither Cole nor Norouzi are apologists for Ahmadinejad or his world-view. Norouzi concludes his essay with this statement:

Iran's president has written two rather philosophical letters to America. In his first letter, he pointed out that "History shows us that oppressive and cruel governments do not survive." With this statement, Ahmadinejad has also projected the outcome of his own backwards regime, which will likewise "vanish from the page of time."

And Cole states:

I should again underline that I personally despise everything Ahmadinejad stands for, not to mention the odious Khomeini, who had personal friends of mine killed so thoroughly that we have never recovered their bodies. Nor do I agree that the Israelis have no legitimate claim on any part of Jerusalem.

But they certainly don't think the widespread and belligerent accusation that Iran intends to wipe Israel off the face of the map ought to be allowed to go unchallenged, for it would seem to lend credence to the American interventionists' view that Iran is nation full of Islamist zealots bent on developing nuclear weapons in order to eradicate the nation of Israel, and that it is thus somehow America's obligation to militarily intervene on behalf of our only ally in the Middle East.