Video YouTube: Girl Goes Ballistic During Body Pat Down At Airport !!! (16 Nov 2010)

Good video. Interesting to note the only 44% of Americans flew within the last year, and of that 44%, only 7% went on four or more round-trips.. A lot of the scanner/groping support definitely seems to be coming from the people who have no clue what's happening.. Sad

 

If the TSA agent thought that this little girl posed such a threat that she needed to be given a pat down wouldn't you think they would assume that if she had explosives on her that her parents were the ones who put them on her and not a total stranger? Therefore, shouldn't her parents have also gotten an extensive pat down? But they didn't which proves that they aren't really LOOKING at who might be a threat - they are just meeting a quota and choosing people at random even if it is obvious they don't pose a threat. And as the little girl gets more and more upset the TSA agent keeps touching her - wow, what a good training program they must have. I saw the interview the father did regarding his daughter's experience with the TSA and some big shot told him they needed to do more training with their agents regarding children - ya think? He actually said they needed to make it more like a game with the children. It's not a game, it's a joke! So much for warning the kids about strangers touching them.

 

I posted this last year at that group blog where I used to write; of course, they didn't give a (expletive deleted).

Looking at this video makes me sick all over again.

 

I sent my daughter this video hoping she would finally see the light but instead she told me the kid was just a brat. Needless to say my daughter doesn't have any children or she would understand how most parents feel about people they don't know touching their children. I'm beginning to think that the only thing that will make my daughter see what's really going on with the TSA is when she is molested and/or her work laptop is stolen while she's being detained. On another note I thought my neighbors had finally come to their senses when they told me they'd rather go to jail than have an enhanced patdown. Recently she went through the metal detector and cleared it when a buzzer went off and she "assumed the position" only to find out they only were going to swab her hands. The fact that she "assumed the position" tells me that she would have allowed a patdown. So much for standing up for your principles. This kind of attitude is why we have an uphill fight.

 

Monica, indeed, it's a sad fact that certain people just won't get it until "it" happens to them. I've been saying since last year, when I first read about the gropes (they were being "tested" in only two airports, Las Vegas and Boston, to see how much crap people would put up with, before they were rolled out nationally 10 months later), that I secretly hoped certain know-nothings I have to deal with would get a taste of the TSA, up close and personal. Because I knew that's the only way they would ever get it through their thick skulls.

Interesting -- and telling -- that your neighbor immediately "assumed the position." She didn't even have to be told. I find that chilling.

 

P.S. And if you sent her the link to the Master Lists that Fisher and I have compiled, I'm sure she wouldn't read them. At most, she'd start going through them, snort in derision and disbelief at the stories, and chuck the whole thing aside.

 

When you watch all these videos you notice that other passengers just walk right by barely looking at the person getting molested. I'm sure my daughter does the very same thing - more interested in picking up her stuff off the x-ray belt and being on her way. And the people who do stop when someone is in obvious distress get verbally abused by the TSA with threats. We've somehow lost our common thread with other human beings. Too caught up in our own little world to notice what is going on around us or have little empathy for strangers. The one video where the older woman, who had never had a patdown, got hysterical and was screaming that she had been molested - not one woman who passed her by stopped to at least try to comfort her. And maybe that's why more people don't complain or resist because they feel alone and not supported in their protest - that one person can't make a difference so why bother. How we, as Americans, accepted this fiasco I truly don't understand. We send our young men and woman to other countries to protect those people from governments who violate their civil rights and then don't do anything to protect our own. Unbelievable!

 

Did any men who passed by stop to comfort her? I know I would have.

As for how we accepted this fiasco, we did it without realizing it. We did it slowly. In baby steps, one tiny little oddity at a time until BAM, we wake up and find ourselves subjected to sexual assault for the "crime" of wanting to get aboard an airplane.

And yeah, I think it was orchestrated that way, like boiling a frog. Funny thing about that analogy, though, is that it's not true for frogs. A frog will jump out of hot water when it gets too hot. Apparently people won't. Unless, of course, they do and TUG is a manifestation of that. I hope that's the case.

 

I remember that video. I watched it all the way through. No, nobody stopped to comfort her. They looked at her, then went on their way. (By the way, it was later revealed that perhaps that had been staged, only in the sense that this family, like us, objects to the TSA and had videotaped another molestation on a previous flight. But even if that's true, it still doesn't change the essential element -- which is that the TSA is assaulting people.)

As for the slow, incremental creep -- this is always how oppression progresses. I have a great quotation from Chris Hedges to that effect that I'll dig up and post. But this was why I was against the scanners from the beginning, before we knew anything about their health effects. It was because of what they represented. It was philosophical. We had already agreed to enough idiocy with the removing of shoes and discarding of liquids. That was enough. When the scanners came along, I knew that worse was on the way. It was inevitable.

I sat at the little restaurant down the street, arguing with close friends, in January 2010, but they just didn't get it. And one of them's a lawyer! You'd figure at least a lawyer would understand and appreciate the concept of unwarranted search and seizure. No go. She still rolls her eyes to this day when I talk about the TSA, which, believe me, is rare because I've learned to whom it's a waste of time to talk about this.