Have They Showered Yet? ‘Occupy’ Comes to Ottawa

Found this pinned to an announcement board at Carleton University. Thank God for the horrible weather we’ve been having lately eh?

What’s puzzling about these ‘Occupy’ groups is that they really have no reason to come to Canada. The protests around the United States don’t even have a coherent message, so what’s the reason for starting protests here? We just had two elections recently, one federal and one provincial, so what’s this nonsense about “we will no longer remain silent.” If you voted, you weren’t “silent,” your political desires were heard. Like it or not, that’s how our political system works.

What’s clear is that Ottawa is going to have to be ready for, not only unsafe and unsanitary conditions (hat-tip Hot Air’s Allahpundit) in and around Confederation Park, but also violence. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted about today’s violence at the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ demonstration. After refusing to temporarily leave Zuccotti Park so that it could be cleaned, protesters celebrated their victory against sanitation by attacking police officers. Here’s the story from CBS New York.

Shortly after protesters learned they’d be able to stay in Zuccotti Park indefinitely, violence broke out Friday morning as a group marched away from it.

Demonstrators clashed with officers while marching to Wall Street’s landmark Bull. Police said arrests — of which there were more than a dozen — were mainly for blocking traffic. Protesters chanted “The whole world is watching” during the arrests…

Does this really surprise anyone? This isn’t the first incident of violence we have seen so far, and I’m positive it won’t be the last.

In any event, residents of Ottawa will have to prepare themselves for the presence of an unruly mob for at least the next few weeks. One can only hope that the weather will be bad enough that even with the kind of funding the other ‘Occupy’ protests have been receiving (you didn’t really think this was an actual “grassroots movement” did you?), they won’t be occupying Confederation Park for long.

UPDATE: Thanks goes to MrAdBaculum for this video of a Marxist-Leninist at the ‘Occupy Ottawa’ protest not only defending Muammar Gaddafi but calling for the destruction of Israel (hat-tip Blazing Cat Fur).

Did anyone else find his anti-Israel/anti-semitic comments just a bit too much to stomach? Blaming the Jews for the world’s problems is one thing, it’s fairly common on the far-left, but calling for the destruction of the state of Israel really crosses the line.

He’s not the only one with these belief though. In fact anti-semitism seems to be a common theme at these ‘Occupy’ protests. Here’s a video from Reason TV of a Los Angeles Unified School District worker doing her best impression of Adolf Hitler.

Zombie at the PJ Tatler has many more examples of anti-semitism from the ‘Occupy Los Angeles’ protest for those who believe these displays of Jew-hatred are just isolated incidents.

One has to wonder how long it will be before the media reports on this. Will it be before or after these protesters express their Jew-hatred through violence? Pathetic…

Quick Post; Reason TV Examines WikiLeaks

I have my own thoughts on WikiLeaks and these document drops, but I don’t mind a meaningful discussion on the impact of the disclosure of highly sensitive information. Meredith Bragg and Michael C. Moynihan from Reason TV had a sit down with four experts, Aaron David Miller, a public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center, Eli Lake, National Security Correspondent at the Washington Times, Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, and Heather Hurlburt, Executive Director of the National Security Network, to discuss both the positive and negative repercussions of the leaking of the state secrets. I felt the video was something my modest readership should watch.

There is something to be said about giving the public transparency on the issue of corruption, but even in the case of Watergate scandal, there wasn’t enough there to justify the leaking of such sensitive information. For the most part, WikiLeaks is more about entertainment than actually accomplishing a meaningful goal. Julian Assange appears to be, as pointed out in the video, an anti-American anarchist, but it is more than that. He appears far more concerned about his own self-promotion than he could be with this misguided campaign, let alone the consequences of it.

In any event, it is by far one of the better breakdowns of WikiLeaks I have come across since this whole fiasco began. Such groups are far too polarizing for either their supporters or detractors to examine fairly, but Reason TV did a very good job by bringing in these experts to do so.

Safety Costs Individual Privacy? A Deeper Look at TSA Security Measures

I touched on this yesterday in a post I wrote directed at the dangers of naive political correctness, but I feel the need to delve deeper into this issue. To start with, here’s the latest video from Drinking with Bob.

Bob highlights the key points raised by those who defend these full-body scanners. With the threat of terrorism to airline travel, all measures must be taken to prevent another attack. Also, since access to airline travel is not a guaranteed right but a business transaction, those who wish to travel by plane need to undergo these screenings. Both are fair points, but both are moot.

The two most recent terrorist attacks, the failed Time Square Bomber Faisal Shahzad and the failed “Underwear Bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, are examples of the failure of these Transport Security Administration (TSA) security measures. As CBS’ Armen Keteyian reported in May, Shahzad, at the time a man wanted in connection to the failed bomb plot, had slipped past specially trained “behaviour detection” agents. Even with his name on a watch list, it was only right before take-off that law enforcement boarded the plane and arrested Shahzad. The same goes for Abdulmutallab, who had boarded a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan after his own father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab warned authorities of his son’s radicalism. If not for his own incompetence and the heroic actions of Jasper Schuringa, Abdulmutallab would have succeeded in killing all 290 people aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253. Clearly, contrary to early claims by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, the system didn’t work. It failed miserably on both occasions.

So what is the use of this enormous and intrusive security system if it can’t prevent known terrorists from getting past security and boarding planes? It is to give the impression that the TSA is doing its job. Instead of taking necessary steps to combat terrorism at airports, like the security procedures El Al Israel Airlines employs to combat terrorism, all we are seeing is token gestures from an agency which obviously doesn’t know what it is doing. Yesterday, John Pistole, Administrator of the TSA, told Congress that the pat-downs would have caught Abdulmutallab, but that is irrelevant. Only passengers who forgo the full-body scan would receive a pat-down, and those machines, as this video demonstrates, aren’t reliable for detecting bomb components. (Hat-tip to Cory Doctorow at boingboing)

Aside from the ineffectiveness of the machine, there is the issue of the revealing photos taken during the scan. While the TSA has stated that these pictures will not be stored, US Marshals at a Florida Federal courthouse, which uses the same scanning equipment, saved 35,000 scanner images. Is it any wonder why Napolitano and the TSA have a credibility problem? Former TSA security director Mo McGowan said earlier this week that the Fourth Amendment is going to have to be violated to combat terrorism directed at the airline industry, further demonstrating the lack of respect the TSA officials have for the privacy rights of passengers. (Hat-tip Hot Air’s Allahpundit)

If the federal government can’t be trusted to ensure the privacy of airline passengers, why should they be trusted to safeguard airports? This issue isn’t preventing further attacks. Americans aren’t complaining about added security measures. The problem is how effective are these measures at preventing terrorist attacks and whether or not such violations of an individuals privacy are worth it. Since the TSA to failed prevent both Shahzad and Abdulmutallab from boarding planes, it is clear that the system isn’t worth such a sacrifice.

So why is the TSA taking the necessary steps to combat terrorism? Political correctness. While Napolitano and TSA officials have stated that religion will not be an excuse for anyone to avoid either the full-body scans or pat-downs, there is more than enough reason to doubt their word. As Nicholas Ballasy of CNS News reported earlier this week, Napolitano herself refused to directly answer this question, instead saying that there will be “adjustments” and “more to come” on the issue. It does appear as if the TSA is under pressure from Muslim groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, who has been instructing Muslim women who wear the hijab to refuse the full-body scans and to advice those administering the pat-downs that they are only allowed to search around their head and neck. Considering that it was Napolitano who refused to use the word “terrorism” during her first testimony on Capitol Hill, instead opting for the term “man-caused disasters,” it wouldn’t be surprising if those in Muslim garb are given an exemption. The irony of this outcome would be that the TSA would be treating everyone else like suspect terrorists, except those most likely to commit acts of terrorism. Many people already feel this way which is why this picture of a Muslim TSA agent giving a pat-down to an elderly Catholic nun is receiving so much attention.

It does seem as the TSA, trying to demonstrate how politically correct it is, treats airline passengers with less respect than prison officials treat convicted criminals. Even children aren’t exempted from this treatment as Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey showed in an earlier post this week about a TSA agent patting-down a 3-year-old girl. While not discriminating against one group or another is usually the best way to approach such issues, we know who we are supposed to be looking for and it isn’t Catholic nuns and young children.

Many Americans feel that these security measures have crossed the line, and I am inclined to agree with them. While those like Bob stress the importance of being vigilant, these TSA security measures are absurd. No matter what John Pistole, the Administrator of the TSA says, it is clear that these security measures aren’t working. They have already failed to prevent Faisal Shahzad and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from bordering international flights and the only thing they do seem capable of doing is infuriating the majority of airline passengers who aren’t terrorists.

UPDATE: The Right Scoop has an article up on Hot Air discussing remarks airline pilot Michael Roberts made on Sean Hannity’s show. While I do believe this screening has gone too far, this discussion point about how it would be easy for a pilot to bring down an airplane is misguided. Though a slightly different scenario, FedEx Flight 705, where Auburn Calloway a disgruntled employee who attempted to hijack and crash the plane, demonstrates why some kind of screening of crew is necessary. A single pilot couldn’t crash the plane himself without some way to subdue everyone else in the cockpit. While Calloway did smuggle weapons aboard for this task, he was overpowered. Does that mean I support the TSA in checking the genitals of pilots? Of course not. As I explained in this post, these security procedures are far too intrusive and aren’t that effective. This doesn’t mean, however, that pilots, as well as other crew members, shouldn’t have to go through the same screening as passengers before boarding a plane as they could pose the same threat, if not a greater one, to the lives of all those aboard.

Politically Correct Nonsense: Whoopi on Oprah and TSA’s Inappropriate Touching

A clip of Whoopi Goldberg on Oprah Winfrey’s show yesterday via Andrew Breitbart’s video website.

No Whoopi, neither Muhammed Ali nor Kareem Abdul Jabar were responsible for the September 11th attacks. That wasn’t what Bill O’Reilly was saying when he was on ‘The View’ weeks ago, but that won’t stop her and Joy Behar from trying to excuse their behaviour. The issue here is that, according to Whoopi, O’Reilly wasn’t being politically correct about this issue. Despite evidence to the contrary, Islam cannot be blamed for these terrorist attacks because not all Muslims are fundamentalist. Not all Muslims are terrorists, but let’s not pretend that Islam itself is not in anyway responsible for the violence we are seeing today.

This is the same kind of thinking that has led the Transport Security Administration (TSA) to feeling up 3-year-old girls. Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey covered this story last Friday, but the accompanying video has been pulled off Youtube. While the more popular story is John “don’t touch my junk” Tyner, I do think the best example of these regulations going too far is the previous story. Once again, we see how absurd this political correctness has become. As Mark Levin said on his show last week, we know who we are looking for and it most certainly isn’t a 3-year-old girl. The problem is that we can’t target those most likely to commit a terrorist attack because one civil rights group after another would be filing lawsuits in protest. Instead, we have to violate the rights of everyone who boards an aircraft to appease these very same groups. As Mark Simone pointed out last night while filling in for Mark Levin, we don’t see the those people who protested the USA PATRIOT Act protesting these TSA security measures, do we? They have a problem with the wire-tapping of suspected terrorists but not the groping of American airline passengers?

Political correctness has gotten to the point of ridiculousness (the absurdity of a Muslim TSA agent frisking a Catholic nun seems lost on those in charge). When facts and reason are thrown away to appease those who support and advocate terrorism, there is a problem. If it isn’t Hollywood celebrities like Whoopi Goldberg trying to tell us how we should think about Islamic terrorism, it is the Transport Security Administration making all American airline passengers uncomfortable because they are unwilling to take the steps necessary to actually combat the real threat. Islamic terrorism is a fact and no amount of politically correct nonsense will change that.

UPDATE: To highlight just how ridiculous things have gotten, Reason TV’s Ted Balaker and Nick Gillespie compare the TSA security regulations to prison-style strip searches. (Hat-tip to Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey)

So what are the differences between a prison-style strip search and these security procedures for those not willing to go through a full-body scan? Prison officials are far more respectful, taking those who need to be searched to a private area, and they don’t touch the person being searched. Why has it come to the point where criminals are treated with more respect than airline passengers? Infuriating…

More on the Stewart/Colbert rally: Attendence Numbers and ‘Drinking with Bob’

I had said in the previous post, I was waiting on something more official than earlier estimates on the crowd size of the ‘Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear’, the event Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had on Saturday. CBS is reporting 215,000 but there is reason to doubt their numbers. Aaron Worthing at Patterico’s Pontifications has a post up saying that CBS’ numbers, and Little Green Footballs’ Charles Johnson’s support for said numbers, are wrong and that more people did attend Glenn Beck’s ‘Restoring Honor Rally’, providing photographic evidence to back up his claim.

And the latest from Johnson is now he is bull___ting about Stewart’s rally. Like I said, I don’t care about crowd size at these things, but I do expect honesty on the subject. So as of now, Johnson has a post that proclaims that 215K attended the Stewart rally….

…Well, which should we believe, Charles? CBS news or our lying eyes?

As stated previously, NBC’s Domenico Montanaro tweeted that officials estimated that 300,000-325,000 people attended the Beck rally, which is still considerably higher than the 215,000 estimated to have attended the Stewart rally. Still, I have trouble trusting CBS’ estimate, especially given how partisan their station and its affiliates have become. Today it came out that reporters from KTVA, CBS’ affiliate in Alaska, accidentally left a voice mail for Republican Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller which reveals they were going to attempt to smear him by locating a child molester at his rally. Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey has been covering this story since this morning, posting on KTVA’s disingenuous admission of half-guilt, in which they claimed that while the reporters did in fact work for them, the recording wasn’t as it sounded. Suffice to say, CBS’ bias towards Democrats, as well as their bias towards the Stewart/Colbert rally, is hard to ignore so whatever they report now shouldn’t be accepted without serious scrutiny.

Aside from the number of attendees, what about the who these people were that attended the rally? The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle and Laura Donovan covered this, pointing out that not only did most of them not know who was running in their districts, but they were going to vote Democrat. NewsBusters.org’s Matthew Sheffield reported on the attendees’ hatred of Glenn Beck and Fox News, as well as the signs they were carrying around, some with “Adolph Hitler mustaches” on prominent Republicans and conservatives like Sarah Palin, John Boehner and Rush Limbaugh. Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie and Michael Moynihan also attended the event, discovering, as Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey pointed out, that “sanity” was a relative term.

Suffice to say, these people are definitely different then those who attended Beck’s rally. As shown in Reason TV’s video, many of them were typical “drones”, people who were unable to accept that Barack Obama and the Democrats were in any way responsible for the situation America was in. Why is this? As ‘Drinking with Bob’ points out, they were told previously by Jon Stewart that “The One” was the one to vote for, and while many of them can no longer trust the man they helped put in the White House, they continue to trust the person who told them who to elect him.

It is any wonder why Arianna Huffington and Oprah Winfrey paid for the buses to get these people to the rally? As Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin’s blog stated, there is a noticeable lack of support for the Democrats with midterm elections two days away.

Even with CBS spinning the attendance numbers, the truth is that rally was a failure. Sure it was mildly entertaining for those who attended, but it didn’t give attendees any real reason vote on November 2nd. They know who they are supposed to vote for, though I have a hard time believing that they will be at the polls in significant enough numbers to make any noticeable impact on the elections’ results. Democrats are going to suffer significant loses and there nothing Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and CBS can do to change that.

UPDATE: What did I say about “drones”? Michelle Malkin has a post up looking at Obama’s most dedicated and delusional followers from before the last election and now as “Hope and Change” will be voted down tomorrow. One has to wonder if “Nameless the Begger” was at the ‘Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear’ eh?

UPDATE: Hot Air’s Allahpundit has a post up concerning Glenn Beck’s response to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s ‘Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.’ While Beck take a few shots at Stewart, more of his criticism is for Colbert who “jumped the shark” with his antics. TheRightscoop.com has the video up of the discussion on Beck’s show about the event and I recommend my modest readership give it a watch.