TSA goes after columnist reading 'Jewish Press' as woman in niqab walks by
I actually got word of this the day it happened (Wednesday), but I didn't get to post it immediately because of work commitments, and then I let it slip.
Columnist Phyllis Chesler was stopped by TSA agents at JFK Airport on Wednesday for having a copy of The Jewish Press out in the open while going through security. While she was being questioned, a Muslim woman wearing a niqab (those bags through which only the eyes can be seen) walked through security unscathed.
My trip through Security at JFK this afternoon was slowed when one of
the agents spotted me holding a copy of the Jewish Press. He found it
suspicious, brought it to another agent, and they had a discussion. At
that point, my bags were opened and searched. Meanwhile, a woman in
niqab – a veil covering the entire face except the eyes -- walked
through without incident. I saw no one ask her to lift the veil to check
her actual identity against her documents.
Phyllis Chesler is... almost old enough to be my mother (sorry Phyllis!) and although she's opinionated, she definitely does not look like a terrorist.....
Great security here in America. Can't wait to fly again.....
At a press conference in Times Square Monday, De Blasio said that he
sent a letter today urging Khalid Abdullah Almolhem, Director General of
Saudi Arabian Airlines, to change the policy or else face consequences.
“Saudi Arabian Airlines uses U.S. airports and yet bans Israeli
citizens from being able to fly on their airline,” he said. If the
airline does not change their policy, “we will act to make sure they’re
excluded from United States airports, starting with JFK,” De Blasio
said.
In addition to JFK, Saudi Airlines also flies out of Washington D.C.’s Dulles International Airport.
The issue was originally brought to the attention of De Blasio’s
office by passengers who attempted to fly the airline, but were
rebuffed. An investigation into the matter by his office confirmed the
airline’s prejudice. Attempts to book tickets by a staffer in his office
posing as an Israeli national both through the airline’s website and
over the phone proved the complaints were founded on truth.
In the case of the airline’s website, a drop down menu does not
include Israel, though it was otherwise so comprehensive that even
Antarctica appeared as an option, though, as De Blasio pointed out, “in
fact, there are no citizens of Antarctica.” The faux Israeli staffer was
also rebuffed when calling over the telephone to reserve a seat, being
told by a ticket agent he could not fly the airline.
The discriminatory practice violates federal law, which says an “air
carrier or foreign air carrier may not subject a person in air
transportation to discrimination on the basis of race, color, national
origin, religion, sex or ancestry,” as well as several New York State
laws.
Obviously, this is an old story. But I wonder why any Israeli would want to fly Saudi Airlines. The only place to which they fly from the US is Saudi Arabia and they won't let Israelis off the plane there anyway. I wonder if they'd let an American whose passport was issued in Jerusalem into Saudi Arabia. And whether I could bring my tefillin along.
On Sunday, London's Daily Mail reported that Ramzy Youssef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, was behind the explosion, that the FBI knew in advance of a plot to blow up a plane, but didn't know which one, and that the source of the FBI's information was recorded conversations between Youssef and his next door neighbor in prison, mob boss Gregory Scarpa, Jr. According to this version, the plane wasn't shot down - it was blown up, maybe by someone on board (Hat Tip: Curtis F).
Yousef was being held in a cell next to Scarpa Jr, Lance explained: ‘The feds were so wary of Yousef’s skills at making improvised bombs that they wouldn’t even let him keep mouthwash or toothpaste in his cell.’
But they provided Scarpa Jr with a tiny spy-camera to photograph the ‘kites’ or pieces of paper pushed from Yousef’s cell through a connecting sink U-bend into his own.
Scarpa Jr had convinced his neighbor that the mafia was sympathetic to al Qaeda’s cause and that ‘his people’ on the outside could help make Yousef’s plans a reality.
The plot revealed in Yousef’s ‘kites’ was startling and clear.
Lance said: ‘They planned to bring down a plane and call for a mistrial in his case. Yousef, who was representing himself and doing not a bad job of it, would argue a bomb went off that was identical to the one I’m accused of and I’ve been in jail for a year and a half…’
Documents prove that the Feds set up a false telephone exchange, the Roma Corporation, which Scarpa Jr told Yousef could safely patch calls through to his people.
Federal translators listened to the calls. But while the translators spoke Arabic, Yousef spoke Balachi or Urdu.
Among the documents copied verbatim or photographed by Scarpa Jr is one entitled, How to Smuggle Explosives into an Airplane and dated 19 May 1996. Just two months before TWA Flight 800 came down.
Lance stated that one former FBI agent, familiar with the intelligence described it to him as ‘weapons grade plutonium.’
He said: ‘It was a blueprint that could have led the Bureau not just to Yousef’s role in the crash of TWA Flight 800 but to 9/11 as well.’
TWA Flight 800 was brought down the day before the most damning evidence in Yousef’s Bojinka trial was due to be revealed – a confession from a co-conspirator.
...
Traces of the high explosive PETN were found on the plane’s right wing near the mid-section. Two metal seats in the 23rd row had fist-sized holes blown through them and explosive RDX was discovered near the PETN above the center wing fuel tank.
RDX was the very explosive mentioned in Yousef’s ‘How To…’ document.
Key to the official dismissal of the presence of a bomb was investigators’ contention that the presence of these explosives was actually due to a sniffer dog trial conducted on the craft some weeks earlier.
The officer conducting that K-9 test was Herman Burnett.
In an interview with Mr Burnett, Lance revealed: ‘He told me categorically that he didn’t carry out the test on that plane.’
The test was conducted on a sister aircraft.
He added: ‘In other words there was no reason for explosives to be found.’
On Sunday, July 14, 1996, Mrs. Carl and I and our five eldest children (the only ones we had then) flew on TWA 880 non-stop from New York - Kennedy to Tel Aviv. The flight was due to take off at 9:00, and we had left our suitcases by friends in Queens earlier in the day. But we discovered that two adults, five kids and 14 suitcases would not all fit in a rented Plymouth Voyager. So I drove Mrs. Carl and the suitcases to the airport and she stayed there and tried to check us all in despite the fact that she was the only one there. I then drove back to Queens to get the kids. But it had taken Mrs. Carl and I over an hour to get to the airport because of horrific traffic and huge thunderstorms, and we actually thought about asking our friends to send the kids to the airport by themselves in a taxi (the oldest was just short of 13 at the time). I drove back to Queens in the end, got the kids, raced back to the airport and dropped off our rental car. Mrs. Carl was waiting outside the terminal. Everything was okay. She managed to check in and the flight was going to be late - very late - anyway. There were mechanical problems with the plane.
Our flight was totally full, and when TWA realized that they could not repair our plane in time, they canceled Flight 800 to Paris and gave us the Paris flight's plane. The Paris flight was supposed to take off at 10:00 if I recall correctly. We took off close to midnight. That might even be the same plane in the picture. Three nights later, Flight 800 mysteriously crashed shortly after takeoff from JFK, killing all 230 people on board.
Because of that story, I have always been fascinated with the TWA 800 crash. For many years, investigators have insisted that there was a fuel explosion in the air. But there were always rumors that someone shot a missile at the flight. Now, some of the crash's investigator's are going public with a story that hints that TWA 800 was shot down.
Flight 800, a Boeing 747, had just taken off from JFK airport with
230 people aboard on July 17, 1996, en route to Paris when it exploded
and crashed off the coast of nearby East Moriches, Long Island, killing
everyone on the plane.
“..This team of investigators who actually handled the wreckage and
victims’ bodies, prove that the officially proposed fuel-air explosion
did not cause the crash,” reads a statement by the producers of the
film, which will debut on cable network EPIX next month. “They also
provide radar and forensic evidence proving that one or more ordnance
explosions outside the aircraft caused the crash.” However, the
statement said they did not speculate about the source or sources of any
ordnance explosions.
The whistle-blower team, which includes investigators -- at the time
-- from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), TWA, and the
Airline Pilots Association, have since retired from their positions.
They claim that at the time, they were placed under a gag order by the
NTSB, which they charged falsified the official conclusion of the cause
of the crash. They indicated they would elaborate more in a Wednesday
media briefing.
The NTSB report, the culmination of a four-year investigation,
suggested the cause of the explosion was due to an explosion in the gas
tank caused by a short circuit.
With conspiracy theories immediately swirling around the crash -- one
being that it was caused by a terrorist missile strike -- the FBI
conducted a 16-month investigation and concluded that there was no
evidence to indicate that any criminal act occurred.
The author of a book and a previous movie about TWA 800 says that the tragedy has a lot in common with the Benghazi terror attack of September 2012, including one central player: Hillary Clinton.
The producers made two strategic moves to force the media to look
seriously at their conclusions. One was to rely heavily on the testimony
of a half-dozen highly credible whistleblowers from within the
investigation.
The second was to avoid politics. When James Sanders and I produced
the video documentary “Silenced” on this subject 12 years ago and the
book “First Strike” two years after that, we made the marketing mistake
of identifying the logic of the cover-up.
That logic led to the White House. Sixteen years ago, in the home
stretch of a difficult re-election campaign, Bill Clinton faced a
problem very similar to one that Barack Obama would face in 2012. This
is something the media did not want to know, let alone share.
An event took place that threatened the “peace and prosperity” theme
of his campaign – specifically, the shoot-down of this doomed airliner
with 230 people on board 12 minutes out of JFK.
Although the word was not used back then, the Clinton White House,
with the help of a complicit media, rewrote the event’s “narrative” to
assure re-election. Again, as with Benghazi, that narrative was clumsily
improvised almost on a daily basis.
Knowing the media had his back, Clinton responded much as Obama did:
deny, obfuscate and kick the investigatory can down the road until after
the election.
One central figure appeared in each drama: Hillary Clinton. She stood
by Obama’s side in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12 as he spun reality into
confection.
Throughout that long night of July 17, 1996, she holed up with Bill
and Sandy Berger in the White House family quarters, assessing their
narrative options much as Obama did on Sept. 11, 2012.
This is way off topic, but it's rare that you get to see this kind of video.
An Air France Airbus A-380 taxiing out to the runway for take-off to Paris, clipped and spun around a Delta Connection flight recently arrived from Boston at JFK Airport in New York on Monday night.
As you watch this video, keep in mind that the Conair - Delta Connection jet is not one of those small propeller jobs with three seats across (two and one with an aisle in the middle) that seatss about 24 people. This is a 70-passenger jet.
Let's go to the videotape.
Something else to keep in mind the next time I travel. /sigh
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
