Posted on 02/19/2005 4:42:49 AM PST by spectrout
Get "snippy" with an airlines' ticket agent and you may never see your luggage again.
That's the experience of Dr. Esha Khoshnu, a New Jersey psychiatrist traveling to San Diego to attend a conference.
While changing planes in Phoenix, Khoshnu got testy at a Mesa Airlines ticket counter, reports KGTV news, saying, "If I had a bomb, you wouldn't find it."
The Transportation Security Administration described Khoshnu as acting "mouthy and snippy," according to KGTV.
The bomb comment touched off a security scare and FBI officials were dispatched to question Khoshnu, who was subsequently detained long enough to miss her flight.
Her suitcase, however, got past security and was loaded onto the America West jet.
When Mesa Airlines Flight 6264 landed at Lindbergh Field in San Diego the pilot was instructed to taxi to a remote area of the airport where some 35 passengers were taken off the plane and escorted onto two buses, reports City News Service.
"When we landed and quickly did a U-turn on the runway, I was like, 'They never do that.' Then, all the cars started coming and it was obvious that it was for our plane. That was the scary part," one passenger told KGTV.
City News Service reports members of the San Diego Fire Department's bomb squad searched the plane but found no explosives. Next, they removed Khoshnu's suitcase and inspected it in an open area on the grounds of the airport.
Although they found nothing suspicious, authorities blew up the bag with an explosive charge and then doused it with water.
Khoshnu was eventually released and allowed to board a later flight to San Diego. KGTV reports the Assistant U.S. Attorney in Phoenix decided her actions did not merit charges.
Same here.
Indeed!
The opinion of others has absolutely nothing to do with (a) our conversation and (b) the situation we are debating.
Unless of course you happen to be strongly infused with the herd instinct as in the majority is always right.
You're being ridiculous and iinsulting now, I suggest you either cool off or clam up.
No.
I am being objective and honest.
You are not. And you are still avoiding the question.
I stand by my comment about you veracity in my previous response.
Darkshear, even the WND article, which is crib from the KGTV story posted earlier, does not allege that she actually said or even implied that she had a bomb. And I excerpted what the Phoenix police in fact said, and provided the link the San Diego Tribune. The Phoenix police found she had done nothing wrong; the TSA agent who had her detained is either incompetent or vindictive, or both. No doubt Dr. Esha Khoshnu would have been smarter to have been a good little sheeple, but she didn't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater or anything like that; and I would hope that an agency entrusted with our airline security would have reacted to a disgruntled passenger with better judgment and just common sense. The reality is that we have, by creating the TSA, created an army of petty dictators who justify their existence by harassing non-threat passengers.
The article above at the head of this thread was what I read first.
If it's inaccurate, I apologize.
Ha haaa!
If she did not say "bomb" of course I would consider the actions of the officials inappropriate and objectionable.
But, then, if she did not say that word - why did the plane get directed to a remote location, and the passengers removed and transported via busses, and the luggage searched? Surely by retaining and questioning her they were able to determine if there was or was not a threat. If not, that would have precluded the need to involve the people for the search and frighten the passengers, etc.
I seriously doubt they would have gone to that length just because they were reacting to her "snippiness." Maybe one or two personnel would be inclined to want to give her a lesson - but not an entire airline, FBI, etc. Something does not smell right to me.
Something in both stories must be incorrect or missing. I guess it will either unravel in future stories or be dropped from the news.
Actually, it was sexist. I assumed only a male capable of being such an arrogant ignoramus. I was wrong. Women can be pompous blowhards in total equality with men. With such a keen and piercing intellect, I kind of wonder what sort of patients this one has...
Since you have enganged in a good Maoist style self denunciation, you won't have to go to the reeducation camp, but you will have to attend an all-day diversity training session at your place of work.
If you've never attended one, it can be educational in ways not intended by the presenter.
Since I'm currently self-employed, I'll do pennance with my own diversity training. Tonight I'll have a vodka screwdriver and tomorrow I'll have a lager beer and, perhaps, I'll give the tails to the dog - that should take care of the diversity part. The training part will consist of 12 oz. curls repeated as needed. Can I pass government certification for this?
By trying to interject logic and reason here, you're wasting your time.
Most Americans are obsessed with power nowadays. Look at our "reality" shows, where winning is everything; and truth, honor, and kindness are scoffed at. And look at these threads where so-called "conservatives" applaud the arbitrary abuse of power in the name of power. (The other side of the political spectrum does it too).
Our new national motto should be "might makes right", because that is what most Americans now believe.
You might add in a standard Oreo and then one of the new ones with the yellow cookies and the chocolate center.
Remember the poor Chinese tourist who was writing down words he didn't understand in a little notebook. He was going to look them up later in his dictionary. Anyway - one of the words he wrote down was 'bomb' and another passenger just happened to be watching what he was writing! They dragged the poor guy off the plane. LOL
We don’t know her exact words…but wouldn’t you expect that if she had used the “B” word the Phoenix police would have used that word, and not “item.” As I noted above the WND article is a crib from another article, in which the “bomb” statement is unattributed. Anyway, it is clear even in the context of the WND article that she was not claiming to have a bomb, but was merely giving her low opinion of the competence of the TSA staff.
But, then, if she did not say that word - why did the plane get directed to a remote location, and the passengers removed and transported via busses, and the luggage searched?
The answer: The TSA are bureaucratic, ham-fisted, bloody-minded, idiots, that think that they have the right to escalate any minor incident to an major incident; and impose absurd rules and regulations, and have us the sheeple pretend that this is all serious or suffer the consequences.
Look, even if she had used the “bomb” word, after the police had determined she was not a threat, and after the plane had already landed at its destination, what was the point of directing the plane to the remote location, scaring the passengers, and searching and then blowing up the luggage…what was the f*ing point? There was no rational point, its just, “This is what we do, this is our policy, and this shows that we are very serious and important and powerful.”
Surely by retaining and questioning her they were able to determine if there was or was not a threat. If not, that would have precluded the need to involve the people for the search and frighten the passengers, etc.
If you read the San Diego Tribune article you will see that Dr. Esha Khoshnu was in fact not found to be a threat, and though she missed her flight, she was allowed to fly on a later flight. The flight she was supposed to be on was allowed to fly because the luggage had been screened, like all the other luggage on the flight.
I seriously doubt they would have gone to that length just because they were reacting to her "snippiness." Maybe one or two personnel would be inclined to want to give her a lesson - but not an entire airline, FBI, etc. Something does not smell right to me.
The are willing to go to this length because they can, without any penalty, because they can cite rules, regulations, procedures, which are replacements for intelligence, judgment and common sense. I didn’t see the airline or the FBI mentioned as factors in this situation. As far as “smell right”: It seems that whenever a conflict between an individual and LEO types arise, someone on the thread will say that the individual’s story “doesn’t smell right,” i.e. no matter what, they assume that the government is right. I don’t know if you saw the recent Freeper vs. TSA thread, but posters were making the same type of comments. Posters also make similar comments on the school zero-tolerance threads, you know when an honor student is arrested and kicked out of school because an old Boy Scout knife is found in his father’s station wagon that he took to school that day.
There is a similarity between the school zero-tolerance threads and the TSA antics, but if brain-dead school administrators unfairly penalize school kids, the damage is limited, but the TSA has the potential of causing unlimited damage to our economy (as the FAA already did) and society by harassing people who are not realistic threats, but refusing to profile by policy the real threats. Do you know that the airlines pre-9/11 had tagged using a terrorist profiling program most of the hijackers but were not allowed, by FAA policy under U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Y. Mineta, to use that information, and are still not allowed to use that information? And that Mineta banned pilot carried guns, and even with an act of Congress the FAA is making it very difficult for pilots to be armed? Don’t you understand that it is the US Government, and not the occasional cranky or disgruntled passenger, who may have good reason to be disgruntled, that is the problem here?
...private air travel is worth the money...
g'night all
Quite true.
These United States were once known as "the land of the free and the home of the brave."
Today, the United States is more accurately described as:
"The land of the servile and timid."
Here are some warnings which have gone unheeded:
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
-- Ayn Rand (“The Nature of Government”)
“Thus the State turns every contingency into a resource for accumulating power in itself, always at the expense of social power; and with this it develops a habit of acquiescence in the people. New generations appear, each temperamentally adjusted – or as I believe our American glossary now has it, ‘conditioned’ - to new increments of State power, and they tend to take the process of continuous accumulation as quite in order. All the State's institutional voices unite in confirming this tendency; they unite in exhibiting the progressive conversion of social power into State power as something not only quite in order, but even as wholesome and necessary for the public good.”
-- A.J. Nock, (Our Enemy the State), 1935
“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there's a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
-- Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
"The safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
-- C.S. Lewis
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
-- C.S. Lewis
“If once they ["our people"] become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves.“
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter from Paris, 1787
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt, 1783
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
-- Noah Webster
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”
-- James Madison
“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.”
-- Edmund Burke
“It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men.”
-- Henry L. Mencken, 1926
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible to live without breaking laws."
-- Ayn Rand, (“Atlas Shrugged”)
"There is none more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free!"
-- Johann W. von Goethe
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.