by Paul Joseph Watson

In the aftermath of the aborted Christmas Day bombing, the corporate media has been busy hyping the necessity of naked body scanners, and the propaganda is habitually accompanied by a raft of quotes from obedient slaves who are prepared to undergo whatever humiliation it takes to provide them with some imaginary sense of “security,” but a recent Guardian poll suggests that this may be nothing more than a giant public relations hoax to hoodwink the masses into cheerleading for their own enslavement.

We see them everywhere, on every TV network, saying exactly the same thing. Every time there is a major terrorist incident, the media endlessly replays footage of obedient Stepford Wife slaves in airports and on the streets calling for more police state measures to protect them from whatever invented boogeyman is being dangled in front of them this time around.

If we were to go by this measure, 99 per cent of people support whatever the government wants to do in the name of the war on terror. This is of course complete baloney – the last few years have seen a massive resurgence in opposition and skepticism towards government policy on almost every political front.

However, every time you pick up a newspaper, turn on the television, or log on to the Internet, the perception being contrived is that the vast majority overwhelmingly support stifling “security” measures in the name of stopping terrorism, with many even lamenting that such intrusions do not go far enough.

A prime example of this can be read in today’s Toronto Star in an article entitledScanners a necessary evil, say travellers.

“Travellers seem happy to be electronically disrobed if it makes flying safer,” we are told. The article then quotes a series of happy-clapping morons who tell the Star what it wants to hear, that people should not resist the implementation of naked body scanners in airports.

“I’d do anything for safety,” said Pari Paramasivam, while waiting for a flight to India at Pearson airport’s Terminal 1.

“For me, if it’s privacy versus safety, it’s always safety.”

According to the Star, all six people they interviewed “accept the need for airport full-body scanners”.

However, the notion that the vast majority of people support airports becoming the primary peddlers of child porn is completely contradicted by a London Guardian pollwhich found that over 70% opposed the body scanners, labeling them “a pointless invasion of privacy”.

Indeed, full body scanners would not even have stopped the Christmas Day bomber from boarding Flight 253, according to a British MP who helped design the machines.

“I must advise the Prime Minister – and the British public – that the scanners are not a “silver bullet,” said Ben Wallace, who worked on the scanners at defense research organization QinetiQ. “You would be mistaken to think that they would counter the new threat.”

“The millimetre wave technology is harmless, quick and can be deployed overtly or covertly. But it cannot detect chemicals or light plastics.”

And yet the fact that the scanners are next to useless only leads to calls to increase our humiliation and fealty, by submitting to scanners that see inside our bodies.

The controllers routinely roll out this mass hoax in the interests of maintaining a “monkey see, monkey do” hive mentality, where people who would ordinarily be opposed having their naked children perved over by some fat greasy TSA agent in a back room are actually brainwashed into thinking this is normal because the other proles they see jabbering on TV say it is.

While this kind of crude propaganda works on a significant number of people, probably nearly as many still have two brain cells to rub together and are rightly repulsed at such a gross violation of privacy, but you won’t see them being interviewed on the evening news because the corporate media, which is owned by the same military-industrial complex making a killing as a result of the implementation of body scanners, doesn’t want the rest of the zombies to awake from their Stockholm syndrome and tear down the walls of the prison planet being built around them.

Here is the Jerky Boy response to the guy with a damned firecracker on a plane.  Reportedly some crazed Nigerian.  Probably just hoping to get arrested so he wouldn’t have to go home to his God-forsaken country. I won’t be surprised to find out he’s a good friend of Ted Turner’s and on the payroll either.

from the Associated Press

WASHINGTON – Some airlines were telling passengers on Saturday that new government security regulations prohibit them from leaving their seats beginning an hour before landing

The regulations are a response to a suspected terrorism incident on Christmas Day.

Air Canada said in a statement that new rules imposed by theTransportation Security Administration limit on-board activities by passengers and crew in U.S. airspace. The airline said that during the final hour of flight passengers must remain seated. They won’t be allowed access to carryon baggage or to have any items on their laps.

Flight attendants on some domestic flights are informing passengers of similar rules. Passengers on a flight from New York to Tampa Saturday morning were also told they must remain in their seats and couldn’t have items in their laps, including laptops and pillows.

The TSA issued a security directive for U.S.-bound flights from overseas, according to a transportation security official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to speak publicly.

The official said passengers traveling internationally could see increased security screening at gates and when they check their bags, as well as additional measures on flights such as stowing carryons and personal items before the plane lands.

Read the rest here, if you want.

Hat Tip to MilitantLibertarian.org.

by Chuck Baldwin

By now, most readers are familiar with the story of how a Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, crashed the White House State Dinner last Tuesday evening. President and Mrs. Obama were entertaining Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the first official State Dinner of the new administration. The Salahis were not on the invited guest list, but were still allowed to walk right into the White House. They even had face-to-face conversations with both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. Photographs of the Salahis with the President and Vice President have been published in numerous newspapers and on hundreds of web sites.

I wonder if the American people are thinking this episode through? Think of it: in the post-9/11 world, a world that has invented the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), body scanners, retina readers, the Patriot Act, hundreds of laws and regulations restricting the freedoms and liberties of the American people, thousands of cameras photographing our public movements, and satellite spy devices, a couple can walk right into the White House and meet the President and Vice President without being invited!

Is there something wrong with this picture, or what?

I well remember what I had to go through when I was an invited guest of then-Vice President George H. W. Bush at the White House. My wife and I joined several others for a luncheon with Vice President Bush and his wife, Barbara. Later that day, we were in a crowd of several hundred who got to meet President Ronald Reagan. Needless to say, security was tight.

Upon arriving, we had to show the proper credentials to White House security, along with a photo ID and the personal invitation that had been sent to us ahead of time. I remember how some of the folks who had actually received invitations were denied entrance due to bureaucratic mix-ups or unintentional lapses in proper protocols. And these were people who really did have an invitation to be there. I can tell you this: there was absolutely no way that an uninvited person could have gained access to the White House that day. And remember: that was nearly two decades BEFORE 9/11!

That an uninvited couple could be granted access to the President and Vice President in this day and time is more than a “fluke.” It betrays something much deeper.

For the last 8 years, the American people have been told they must sacrifice certain liberties in order that the federal government might protect them. And for the most part, the American people have been happy to accommodate this incessant intrusion into their personal liberties. They know the feds are monitoring their emails, personal phone conversations, and even their personal letters when received from overseas. They have sat silently as their banking institutions have monitored and reported virtually any and all financial transactions to the federal government. In today’s super-security world, one cannot even cash a check without showing the bank teller his or her driver’s license, which is recorded and made available to the feds. Sometimes, we are even required to provide our thumbprints. Beyond that, even certain service personnel that must come into our homes to provide in-home repair services, home inspections, or general services are often required to report what they see to various law enforcement authorities. All of this is done in the name of “national security.”

All the while, America’s federal buildings today more resemble castles of ancient Europe than they do buildings that house the people’s servants. Concrete barriers along with super-reinforced, “bomb proof” structures remind one of castles of old, with their guard towers and crocodile-filled moats. Today, people must walk through metal-detectors and surrender their pocketknives to even visit their local supervisor of elections office (or just about any other public office, for that matter). Again, this is all done under the rubric of “homeland security.”

In the name of “national security,” veterans who have been accused of some kind of domestic disturbance or who have affirmatively answered an ambiguous question on a VA form regarding whether they have feelings of “anger” or “depression” are having their right to keep and bear arms stripped away. That’s right, in the name of “homeland security,” some of the very men who were entrusted with lethal weapons to fight America’s wars are now being told they are not fit to purchase or possess their own firearms.

Yet, in spite of all of the above, an uninvited couple is allowed to calmly walk right past Secret Service personnel and have personal audiences with the President and Vice President of the United States in what is ostensibly the most heavily-guarded, tightly secured building in the country: the White House.

Furthermore, this story comes on the heels of the mass shooting on what one would think would be a rather secure location: the US Army base at Fort Hood, Texas. And, have we forgotten the fellow who brought a gun into the Capitol Building (the home of the US Congress) in Washington, D.C., a few years ago and killed two police officers?

Dear Reader, ask yourself this question, Do you really think those schmucks in Washington, D.C., actually believe that protecting you and me is more important than protecting American soldiers, US congressmen, and especially the President of the United States? “Are you serious?” (To quote Nancy Pelosi.) The truth is, to the elites in DC, you and I are expendable commodities. In fact, to some of the soulless creatures running things, you and I are worth more dead than alive (but that’s a topic better discussed at a later date).

The point is, all this talk about “national security” is simply a ruse for Big Government elitists to steal our liberties and make slaves out of us. They don’t care about security; all they care about is POWER.

So, the next time you are required to be strip-searched by an airport screener, or to surrender your pocketknife at your local county commissioner’s office, or to show your driver’s license to your bank teller, or to submit to a random police checkpoint; the next time you make a phone call that you know is monitored by a federal agent (and they all are), or drive under a video camera, or visit these castle-esque federal buildings, remember Michaele and Tareq Salahi. And, if you are old enough, remember the time in America when we really were the “land of the free.” And also remember that it’s not security they seek – it’s the abolition of our liberty.