This is what happens if you refuse to walk through a radiation-emitting scanning machine at your local airport. The United States government is obsessed with people having hidden bombs on their bodies going so far as to even screen little children. Only under considerable pressure the Federal Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced this past week that it will no longer screen children under 12. They are still worried though that our teenagers could be terrorists in disguise.
“In episode after episode the TSA has demonstrated a knack for ignoring the basics of customer relations,” writes the Associated Press. It should be no surprise, considering their mission, that they cannot do their work “without treating everyone from frequent business travelers to the family heading home to visit Grandma as a potential terrorist.”
Rep. Ron Paul has introduced the American Traveler Dignity Act, which would strip away some of the TSA’s power over travelers by denying them immunity for any crimes committed in airport security stemming from their new invasive search procedures. The New York Times writes, “There is no excuse for the bumbling, arrogant way the Transportation Security Administration has handled questions and complaints about its new body-scanning machines and more aggressive pat-downs. The Times reported on Friday that civil liberties groups have collected more than 400 complaints since the new pat-downs began three weeks ago.”
Some airports are considering another way to show dissatisfaction with
what the government is doing and that is to ditch TSA agents altogether.
Federal law allows airports to opt for screeners from the private sector instead.
Not sure exactly why they are afraid for public safety when they themselves are the greatest threat to Americans and what used to be the cherished American way of life. Certainly Americans are not enjoying what their government is doing to them. “Some offer graphic accounts of genital contact, others tell of agents gawking or making inappropriate comments, and many express a general sense of powerlessness and humiliation. In general, passengers are saying they are surprised by the intimacy of a physical search usually reserved for police encounters. ‘I didn’t really expect her to touch my vagina through my pants,’ said Kaya McLaren, an elementary schoolteacher from Cle Elum, Wash., who was patted down at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport last Saturday because the body scanner detected a tissue and a hair band in her pocket.” writes the New York Times.
“This technology can go right up a woman’s skirt,” says Susan Herman, President of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and law professor at Brooklyn Law School. The Christian Science Monitor writes, “As the debate about the Transportation Security Administration’s screening procedures pings across the Internet, a growing chorus of critics is asserting that electronic imaging scans and ‘enhanced pat-downs’ both represent an unconstitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches.” As the high-travel Thanksgiving holiday approaches, travelers and lawmakers are up in arms over airport security measures. On special web sites, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the U.S. Travel Association have been getting thousands of complaints. Facebook and Twitter are smoking with posted outrage.”
Time Magazine writes, “The new ‘strip search’ scanning machines at airport security checkpoints are increasingly causing furor over issues of privacy, decency, and health. Whether or not you feel the new backscatter body scans (let alone the security gropes) are an overly humiliating invasion of privacy, there’s no arguing that the scans expose you to extra radiation. Many passengers and some scientists say the excess radiation exposure could pose a health hazard to frequent fliers and to young children. The scans may be exposing passengers to more radiation than Napolitano is letting on.”
The Associated Press writes, “As the government rolls out hundreds more full-body scanners at airports just in time for crowds of holiday travelers, scientists worry that machines might malfunction, raising the risk of cancer. ‘The thing that worries me the most is what happens if the thing fails in some way and emits too much radiation,’ said Arizona State University physics professor Peter Rez. ‘The risk for failure is higher than in a medical setting because the machines are operated much more often, and by TSA workers without medical training,’ Rez said. ‘Though the scanner images do not reveal what’s beneath the skin’s surface, the radiation they emit could potentially affect breast tissue, sex organs and eyes,’ said David Agard, an imaging expert at the University of California at San Francisco.”
The Science of Radiation Danger
The government insists that full-body scanners at airports are safe. The federal government insists many things are safe when we damn well know they are not. In July of 2005 the National Academy of Sciences came to the conclusion that the preponderance of scientific evidence shows that even very low doses of radiation pose a risk of cancer or other health problems and there is no threshold below which exposure can be viewed as harmless. [1]
Many scientists generally assumed that low levels of radiation are harmless since they produced no immediately observable effects. However during the past few decades tremendously improved radiation measurement techniques coupled with detailed laboratory studies revealed many previously unsuspected hazards from low levels of ionized radiation. Some researchers have even added the view that chronic low-level exposure to radiation poses a greater risk than short-term, high-level exposure.[2]
Just being alive today is to walk through the valley and shadow of death in terms of radiation exposure. Background radiation on earth has increased in the nuclear age, coming from all the above-ground testing of the last century, nuclear plants, nuclear waste, uranium mining, and from depleted uranium weapons that are used in the American, British and Israeli armies, navies, and air forces. In addition there is constant and increasing exposure to other forms of radiation from microwave towers, cell phones, wireless phones, and computer Wi-Fi systems.
The medical establishment throws caution to the wind and subjects people to ever-higher levels of radiation with the addition of massive use of these new body scanners at airports. According to the Times, “Americans today receive far more medical radiation than ever before. The average lifetime dose of diagnostic radiation has increased sevenfold since 1980, and more than half of all cancer patients receive radiation therapy.” CT scans can deliver the radiation equivalent of 400 chest X-rays. An estimated 70 million CT (for computed tomography) scans are performed in the United States every year, up from three million in the early 1980s according to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Radiation exposure became a major concern in October 2009 after the FDA said it was investigating 206 cases of patients being exposed to toxic doses of radiation during CT scans of the brain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. High doses of radiation can cause skin burns, cataracts, and other injuries—and, in extreme cases, cancer and death. The FDA said it received 1,182 medical device reports about problems between December 31, 1999 and February 18, 2010.
But don’t worry, if the government says it’s safe then it must be. Obama administration officials are insisting that the measures now in place are justified by the risks. We have lost the war on terrorism for the terrorists have increasingly been able to scare the west into becoming increasingly controlling of their own populations. Now when Big Brother says jump, we just say: How high? The destruction of human freedom and dignity is worth it right? I wonder what’s next.
Special Note: I suggest everyone in the States read Dr. Rabbi Gabriel Cousens letter Defend Your Dinner – Fight Bill 510 in the Senate
I am writing to tell you about an opportunity to turn the tide in the battle to secure authentic freedom for organic farming and non-GMO foods. For some time now, we have been aware of an impending threat to the foundations of our health. Having stopped a mandated swine flu vaccine, and having addressed, to the best of our ability, the Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010, it is time for us to nip Bill S 510, or the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, in the proverbial bud. Bill S 510 is currently stalled in Congress. If we act now, we can ameliorate its potentially deadly implications, or even end it altogether.
Bill S 510 amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) and expands the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services to regulate food. It also authorizes the Secretary to suspend the registration of a food facility. Given the fact that Bill S 510 “considers” harmonization with Codex Alimentarius, this appears to be a strategic maneuver, in a long line of attacks, on our health and rights. Read More…..
[1] The linear no threshold modelor LNTM is a model of damage done by radiation. This model assumes that the response to radiation exposure is linear and that this linear relationship continues to very small doses, that is to say that there is no threshold of exposure below which the response ceases to be linear. When it comes to radiation if a particular dose of radiation is found to produce one extra case of a type of cancer in every thousand people exposed, the LNTM predicts that one thousandth of this dose will produce one extra case in every million people so exposed, and that one millionth of this dose will produce one extra case in every billion people.
[2] The Petkau effect: discovered by Abram Petkau at the Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. Whiteshell Nuclear Research Establishment, Manitoba, Canada in 1972 Dr. Petkau discovered that at 26 rads per minute (fast-dose rate) it required a total dose of 3,500 rads to destroy a cell membrane. However, at 0.001 rad per minute (slow dose rate), it required only 0.7 rad to destroy the cell membrane. The mechanism at the slow-dose rate is the production of free radicals of oxygen (O2 with a negative electrical charge) by the ionizing effect of the radiation. The sparsely distributed free radicals generated at the slow-dose rate have a better probability of reaching and reacting with the cell wall than do the densely crowded free radicals produced by fast-dose rates.
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