All Hank, all the time.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Marty Peretz -- who is a pompous gasbag, and a jackass to boot -- describes how Israel screens airline passengers:

• Every passenger who flies El Al, whether from Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv or from locations outside Israel, is put through a personalized psychometric at point of departure. This is not a machine test. It is an interview, short but probing, with questions that some may experience as a bit invasive, before the passenger gets to the ticket counter.
  
  It is hard to imagine the current crop of Transportation Security Administration employees deployed in U.S. airports performing this delicate function. The interviewers are smart and young, mostly female, and on their way to other jobs. It was one of these El Al personnel who discovered, simply by talking with and closely observing a young Irish woman, that she had carried in her checked baggage a "gift" she had not seen, handed to her by a Palestinian boyfriend. She was also carrying his baby in her stomach. The boyfriend was a ... well, you understand what he was.
  
  I have traveled to and from Israel on dozens of occasions. Each time I am a bit surprised and sometimes even thrown off balance by the questions. The volume of passengers at U.S. and big European airports might preclude relying on a system like Israel's--unless, of course, security service at airports and other vulnerable spots in society were to be made mandatory for a year or so. You can't imagine what a trained young person can discover in watching the subtle behavior of anxious people.
  
  Here is a true story. Do you remember the days when student air discount tickets were available for almost anybody not obviously in middle age? Well, some twenty years ago, a friend of mine, an American who was living in Rome and working in advertising, was to meet me in Israel. He had purchased a bootleg El Al student ticket. When he arrived at Da Vinci Airport, he was greeted by a genial security officer. She looked at his passport and then his ticket. "Oh, you are a student," she exclaimed. "What do you study?" Fishing out of nowhere and quickly, Bill said, "Architecture." "So, tell me," asked his questioner, "when was Palladio born?" He did not get on the plane till the next day when his innocence of malevolent intent was vouched for and proven. Now that is security.

There is no good reason for us not to be doing the same thing, except that our government does not take the threat of terrorism as seriously as Israel's does.

\

Stop posting him, my opinion of MP is starting to change. To your chagrin.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
Why doesn't she have to make out with anyone? Can we make that a predicate to her participation? Not that I want to, necessarily, nttawwt, I just wonder why we want to dismiss it out of hand........

OK.

Can we serve wine and bill LT?

OK, but none of that Washington State box wine you keep pushing. It tastes like plastic, with hints of armpit and lumpy milk.

[Adder]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Marty Peretz -- who is a pompous gasbag, and a jackass to boot -- describes how Israel screens airline passengers:

• Every passenger who flies El Al, whether from Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv or from locations outside Israel, is put through a personalized psychometric at point of departure. This is not a machine test. It is an interview, short but probing, with questions that some may experience as a bit invasive, before the passenger gets to the ticket counter.
  
  It is hard to imagine the current crop of Transportation Security Administration employees deployed in U.S. airports performing this delicate function. The interviewers are smart and young, mostly female, and on their way to other jobs. It was one of these El Al personnel who discovered, simply by talking with and closely observing a young Irish woman, that she had carried in her checked baggage a "gift" she had not seen, handed to her by a Palestinian boyfriend. She was also carrying his baby in her stomach. The boyfriend was a ... well, you understand what he was.
  
  I have traveled to and from Israel on dozens of occasions. Each time I am a bit surprised and sometimes even thrown off balance by the questions. The volume of passengers at U.S. and big European airports might preclude relying on a system like Israel's--unless, of course, security service at airports and other vulnerable spots in society were to be made mandatory for a year or so. You can't imagine what a trained young person can discover in watching the subtle behavior of anxious people.
  
  Here is a true story. Do you remember the days when student air discount tickets were available for almost anybody not obviously in middle age? Well, some twenty years ago, a friend of mine, an American who was living in Rome and working in advertising, was to meet me in Israel. He had purchased a bootleg El Al student ticket. When he arrived at Da Vinci Airport, he was greeted by a genial security officer. She looked at his passport and then his ticket. "Oh, you are a student," she exclaimed. "What do you study?" Fishing out of nowhere and quickly, Bill said, "Architecture." "So, tell me," asked his questioner, "when was Palladio born?" He did not get on the plane till the next day when his innocence of malevolent intent was vouched for and proven. Now that is security.

There is no good reason for us not to be doing the same thing, except that our government does not take the threat of terrorism as seriously as Israel's does.

I agree. We had a very pale shadow of this sort of thing at one point, but the universal uproar against the three questions (did you pack your own bags? did anyone give you to take on the plane? have your bags been with you since you packed?) after 9/11 only moved us farther away. Those questions were far from sufficient, but the goal there was to catch the stupid (like the Irish girl in the story), not the suspiciously nervous.

Anyway, point being is that I think we could get some incrimental gain just by enlisting airline ticket and gate agents again in the interrim while professionals are trained.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
OK.



OK, but none of that Washington State box wine you keep pushing. It tastes like plastic, with hints of armpit and lumpy milk.

I can get a discount on some CT wine...

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Adder
I agree. We had a very pale shadow of this sort of thing at one point, but the universal uproar against the three questions (did you pack your own bags? did anyone give you to take on the plane? have your bags been with you since you packed?) after 9/11 only moved us farther away. Those questions were far from sufficient, but the goal there was to catch the stupid (like the Irish girl in the story), not the suspiciously nervous.

.

The liberals view terrorism as a domestic criminal matter. Those questions were designed to bolster the fraud prosecution, after the fact.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
The liberals view terrorism as a domestic criminal matter. Those questions were designed to bolster the fraud prosecution, after the fact.

Too many people in this country do not trust authorities to use their discretion, and would rather address problems through rules. This same impulse gives us sentence guidelines, which take discretion away from judges (and give it to prosecutors, but few people understand that), and zero-tolerance policies, so that six-year-olds can be suspended from school for having butter knives in their backpack.

I don't think this is necessarily a conservative impulse, but it is consistent with the conservative attacks on government over the last couple of decades and with "get tough" politicians who put more energy into campaigning than into governing.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Too many people in this country do not trust authorities to use their discretion, and would rather address problems through rules. This same impulse gives us sentence guidelines, which take discretion away from judges (and give it to prosecutors, but few people understand that), and zero-tolerance policies, so that six-year-olds can be suspended from school for having butter knives in their backpack.

I don't think this is necessarily a conservative impulse, but it is consistent with the conservative attacks on government over the last couple of decades and with "get tough" politicians who put more energy into campaigning than into governing.

I can give that a qualified 2... is that 1.8?

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Too many people in this country do not trust authorities to use their discretion, and would rather address problems through rules. This same impulse gives us sentence guidelines, which take discretion away from judges (and give it to prosecutors, but few people understand that), and zero-tolerance policies, so that six-year-olds can be suspended from school for having butter knives in their backpack.

I don't think this is necessarily a conservative impulse, but it is consistent with the conservative attacks on government over the last couple of decades and with "get tough" politicians who put more energy into campaigning than into governing.

we don't trust the government, so we want rules? do you laugh behind your back at the people who respond to you?

We have far too many airports and far too few* "smart young people" willing to be in Governement service. also, don't know if you remember, but the brave Democratic congress made sure TSA was ruled by government employment rules. So don't talk about our "level of warm comfort with little real security" as being tied at all to anything other than your union lobbys.

*especially as compared to Israel.

[Penske_Account]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
we don't trust the government, so we want rules? do you laugh behind your back at the people who respond to you?

We have far too many airports and far too few "smart young people" willing to be in Governement service. also, don't know if you remember, but the brave Democratic congress made sure TSA was ruled by government employment rules. So don't talk about our "level of warm comfort with little real security" as being tied at all to anything other than your union lobbys.

2, I am unqualifiedly against the unions.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Too many people in this country do not trust authorities to use their discretion, and would rather address problems through rules. This same impulse gives us sentence guidelines, which take discretion away from judges (and give it to prosecutors, but few people understand that), and zero-tolerance policies, so that six-year-olds can be suspended from school for having butter knives in their backpack.

I don't think this is necessarily a conservative impulse, but it is consistent with the conservative attacks on government over the last couple of decades and with "get tough" politicians who put more energy into campaigning than into governing.

I agree with this -- if we are going to protect against terrorism on airplanes, people are going to have to trust the government more. And get (meaning pay for) better TSA people.

[Adder]

How is this possible:

• BOSTON -- Fighter jets escorted a diverted London-to-Washington, D.C., flight to Boston's Logan airport Wednesday after a distraught passenger pulled out a screw driver, matches, Vaseline and a note referencing al-Qaida, an airport spokesman said.
  
  United Flight 923 landed safely, Logan airport spokesman Phil Orlandella said.
  
  The flight, with 182 passengers and 12 crew members landed safely, UAL Corp. spokesman Brandon Borrman said. Borrman said a female passenger was spotted engaging in some "suspicious" activity, but he could not immediately say what the activity was.
  
  State Police and federal agencies took control of the plane after it landed.
  
  Passengers were seen coming off the plane on the tarmac and being loaded onto a bus. Orlandella said their carry-on luggage was being checked. The flight was from London's Heathrow Airport to Dulles.
  
  Last week, British authorities said they foiled a terror plot to blow up trans-Atlantic flights from London to the United States

link

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
we don't trust the government, so we want rules? do you laugh behind your back at the people who respond to you?

We have far too many airports and far too few "smart young people" willing to be in Governement service. also, don't know if you remember, but the brave Democratic congress made sure TSA was ruled by government employment rules. So don't talk about our "level of warm comfort with little real security" as being tied at all to anything other than your union lobbys.

It's the question of rules vs. discretion, Hank. If you were awake in the first year of law school, you may remember the issue. It probably came up when your friends in Pennypacker were shooting the shit late at night.

If you give people a meaningful job, pay them better, and give them a chance to make a difference, you'll get interest in the job. TSA offers none of those things right now.

And you correctly remember that the terms of employment at DHS were an issue, but you are wrong about how it ended up. The GOP won on that one. And yet TSA isn't exactly a model bureaucracy. Go figure.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
It's the question of rules vs. discretion, Hank. If you were awake in the first year of law school, you may remember the issue. It probably came up when your friends in Pennypacker were shooting the shit late at night.

If you give people a meaningful job, pay them better, and give them a chance to make a difference, you'll get interest in the job. TSA offers none of those things right now.

And you correctly remember that the terms of employment at DHS were an issue, but you are wrong about how it ended up. The GOP won on that one. And yet TSA isn't exactly a model bureaucracy. Go figure.

discretion = profiling. as to TSA I am almost certain it's employees come under normal rules for Union/discipline etc. but have to go right now so I can't google it.

And the TSA people I see seem like they are quite interested- maybe not all, but certainly a good majority seem like people who do not want to allow the next 9/11 to happen.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Penske_Account
The liberals view terrorism as a domestic criminal matter.

I think the liberal view of terrorists as criminals also has something to do with liberals' sympathy for terrorists. Terrorists do what they do because they have no other options to fight those in power. Liberals live to challenge power structures. Its part of the definition of a classic liberal in this country. Liberals "understand" terrorists. In a queer way, they sympathize with a terrorist's struggle, even if they loath what the terrorist does.

The liberals are misguided. They miss the fact that this isn't a David v. Goliath thing. The terrorists are not fighting for righteous change - they just want to be in power, and be every bit as oppressive as the regimes they cry have oppressed them.

[Sidd Finch]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
The date should be obvious - September 11th, 2006.

Plus, school shouldn't start until after labor day.

If anyone else wants to join us (Sidd, Club, GGG, Fringey, Spank, Panda, Gatti, Adder, Sebby, RT, Weed, Burger, Viola, Keaton, Hank, Wonker, etc) - this is the read:


Amazon link

Only if I don't need to write a paper afterwards.