Monday, February 02, 2004

Grounded For Life. New at Reason: Been razzed by the Transportation Safety Administration lately? James Bovard takes off his shoes, throws out his disposable razors, turns on his laptop, and explains why it can only get worse. [Hit & Run] Since 9/11 I've been reading about (or hearing) various blowhards claiming that an American airplane could never again be hijacked, because the passengers would take out the hijackers. I've always considered that to be remarkably naive (the only instance of passengers subduing a terrorist post-9/11 involved French passengers on a French plane). In this Reason article we see an example of what would really happen: on August 31, 2002, Delta Flight 442 was proceeding from Atlanta to Philadelphia with 183 people on board when a disheveled passenger began rummaging in the overhead bin. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the trouble began when the man "made inappropriate comments to a female passenger a few rows behind him." Two plainclothes air marshals jumped up and tackled the guy, shoving him first to the back of the plane and then dragging him to the first class area. Then the trip got interesting. One of the marshals returned to the front of the coach section, drew his Glock semiautomatic pistol, and started screaming and pointing his gun at passengers. Philadelphia Judge James Lineberger, a passenger on the flight, later told the Associated Press, "I assumed at that moment that there was going to be some sort of gun battle....There were individuals looking to see what they were pointing at, and [the air marshals] were yelling, ÎGet down, get out -- get your head out of the aisle.â" In a formal complaint to the TSA, Lineberger declared that "there was no apparent reason for holding all the passengers of the plane at gunpoint, and no explanation was given." Lineberger was sitting diagonally across from the initial target of the marshals, yet did not notice any problem on the flight until the marshals went ballistic. Susan Johnson, a social worker from Mobile, Alabama, was also unaware of any disturbance until the air marshals seized the man. "It never made sense," she told the Inquirer. "This guy was not any physical threat that we could see. Maybe he said some things to them that made them concerned. He just appeared to us unstable, emotionally." According to Becky Johnson, a reporter who wrote a column about the episode for her Waynesville, North Carolina, newspaper, "They never, ever said who they were, that they were air marshals or whoever." Note that in this incident the air marshals never identified themselves as such, and in fact were behaving exactly like crazed terrorists. Yet the passengers did nothing--as I would expect from people who have been conditioned for generations to be passive victims and wait for the government to rescue them. 10:18:45 AM    comment () Dispatches from the Biowars. Greenpeace cofounder-cum-defector Patrick Moore has a piece in the new American Enterprise on the battle over biotech, inlcuding a nice description of how the tide turned in India: For six years, anti-biotech activists managed to prevent the introduction of G.M. crops in India. This was largely the work of Vandana Shiva, the Oxford-educated daughter of a wealthy Indian family, who has campaigned relentlessly to "protect" poor farmers from the ravages of multinational seed companies. In 2002, she was given the Hero of the Planet award by Time magazine for "defending traditional agricultural practices." Read: poverty and ignorance. It looked like Shiva would win the G.M. debate until 2001, when unknown persons illegally planted 25,000 acres of Bt cotton in Gujarat. The cotton bollworm infestation was particularly bad that year, and there was soon a 25,000 acre plot of beautiful green cotton in a sea of brown. The local authorities were notified and decided that the illegal cotton must be burned. This was too much for the farmers, who could now clearly see the benefits of the Bt variety. In a classic march to city hall with pitchforks in hand, the farmers protested and won the day. Bt cotton was approved for planting in March 2002. One hopes the poverty-stricken cotton farmers of India will become wealthier and deprive Vandana Shiva of her parasitical practice. [Hit & Run] 9:40:08 AM    comment ()

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