Two bloggers take on the Transport Security Administration
The first thing about Chris Elliott is that he is a well connected young man, if he still is young and if he is a man. That is not to cast aspersions on him but merely to illustrate one of the problems in the sphere – one never knows with whom one is actually dealing.
This can be a double-edged sword, as you know. The only thing you can do is judge by a blogger’s output over time. Every blogger either sets out his stall or comes into blogging and his stall develops over time, which is what happened to me. I began as a commenter at Stephen Pollard’s old site, had an online argument with another reader over three days and thought it was time to try this lark.
The reason I know of Chris Elliott is because I read about him in the MSM, in the NYT to be precise and the reason I knew about this article in the NYT was because of Google News which gives you all the American news although they pretend they’re a world service. I use the Beeb as my first port of call for British news.
The reason I mentioned that was because I most likely would never have heard of Chris Elliott without the intermediaries of Google and the MSM, so in the light of the blogosphere’s castigation of the MSM being controlled [which it has been shown to be many times], it still is a necessary “through route” to get to other bloggers. Bloggers’ own networking is good but not as instant as the MSM.
What was the issue about anyway?
Chris Elliott has become a travellers’ rights blogger, exposing airline shortcomings and deceptions and taking on the Transportation Security Administration, among others. Therefore he is a sitting target for one of the most visible signs in the community of the coming totalitarianism and restriction of people’s freedom of movement, of association and speech, all under the guise of security, on account of incidents such as the Detroit bomber whom authorities knew about all the way along the line and whose case has now resulted in greater privations than earlier. Known about but in later reports, this had subtly shifted to the authorities being “insufficiently aggressive“.
That’s classsic. Insufficiently diligent in following a known lead with Al Qaeda connections, PC enough to not see his ethnicity and age group as a potential risk – yes, both those things. But insufficiently aggressive in vetting the ordinary passengers?
An example of Chris Elliott’s work is here:
“Passengers flying from international locations to U.S. destinations may notice additional security measures in place,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in a prepared statement yesterday. “These measures are designed to be unpredictable, so passengers should not expect to see the same thing everywhere.
[Meanwhile], airlines have already turned off their in-flight entertainment systems, forced passengers to remain in their seats an hour before landing, taken away pillows and blankets and limited the use of electronic devices and in-flight wireless Internet connections.
Worse, TSA hasn’t said a word about these directives to the flying public, despite repeated requests for comment.
Not the type of thing to endear Chris to the TSA or to anyone else up there in the security world and creating a sort of “let’s hit this b–ger where it hurts” mentality which bureaucracies are so wont to adopt against anyone questioning them in any widely read form.
Result?
He was visited by Homeland Security:
We had just put the kids in the bathtub when Special Agent Robert Flaherty knocked on my front door with a subpoena. He was very polite, and used “sir” a lot, but he said he just wanted a name: Who sent me the security directive?
This sort of thing is going on all over the world now – draconian measures, almost measures of paranoia, again characteristic of bureaucracies run riot although passengers in the U.S.A.appear to be some of the most shoddily served in the world.
Enter the attorneys for Chris Elliott and now the MSM reports:
The Transportation Security Administration on Thursday dropped the subpoenas it had issued to two Internet writers in its effort to learn who leaked an airline security directive. The agency said the investigation was “nearing a successful conclusion, and the subpoenas are no longer in effect.” The security directive ordered extra measures after a Christmas Day attack on a Detroit-bound airliner.
Now I have three questions:
1. Does this man seem to you like Achmed the Terrorist? Is he in a socio-economic, national or ethnic group given to terrorism? Though we don’t know if Chris is who he says he is, he was visited by authorities and it’s not hard to get his details, is it?
2. Was this matter one of security in the sense that his publishing of measures of further privation the authorities are taking against passengers would be likely to increase a suicide bomber threat?
3. Why would they have dropped the subpoena when they did? How far was it due to blogosphere exposure and how far due to attorney pressure?
Not just with Chris Elliott either:
I also just spoke with Steve Frischling, who had also been served with a subpoena in connection with the security directive. He says he received a phone call from a deputy chief counsel for enforcement at the DHS to let him know he was off the hook and that the agency had offered to buy him a new computer. His previous computer had been damaged after Frischling consented to a search of his computer and hard drive.
Aren’t those kneejerk, bully-boy tactics revealing of the state of the State today, with two young men who are certainly provocative and yet are otherwise indigenous citizens of the United States, not having the ability to expose corruption and other wrongdoing, which is clearly the purpose of their blogs?
When people are leaving comments here on this blog saying that none of this is happening worldwide, that the following of a known security breach in Detroit just happening to be followed by further measures against passengers is just a coincidence, then just how far can credulity be stretched?
Interesting little tale. Welcome to 2010, readers.
Filed under: Life issues & people, Politics & economics
It’s not just the State. Richard North at EU Referendum has had a letter from solicitors Mischon de Reya threatening him over his posts on his blog. He hasn’t been able to say very much but a small amount of guesswork leads us to believe it is Pauchauri or TATA. More likely the second one as a large international corporation has deeper pockets than an individual but could be a smokescreen to cover up the real driver behind their action.
If Pauchauri is using his connections with TATA to do this then it rather confirms Richard’s expose of Pauchauris connections to TATA despite his denials. It is also another case of where a foreign company can make use of our libel laws to try and silence a critic of their activities. Just hope that if it comes to court it isn’t Eady who hears the case as he has done more to create a privacy law for the so called elite than any other judge before him.
What a start to 2010. It’ll be interesting to see what other surprises are in store.
On the other hand…If you are part of Common Purpose, a known murderer, you get promoted TWICE, and then feature in the NEW YEARS HONOURS LIST. You have the name CRESSIDA DICK,…. MISS DICK.
For fucks sake, does it ever end? What sort of nation are we?
Directed to The Economic Voice…..If you think all this lot is unrelated, you’ve got rocks in your head. Just visit a few websites and look at interlocking directorships, for eg.
The “conspiracy” is difficult to point to. It spreads like a fog, penetrates every where, a nod, a wink, you scratch mine… etc.
As I repeatedly point out, it was conceived hundreds of years ago, and set out in detail. Communicated from a death-bed to the heirs. It is now a global hydra, working through “educational” and other “innocent sounding” organisations. Based in finance it plans decades ahead (eg global warming scam) and prepares the peons for their eventual slavery via owned media and sophisticated persuasion, false flag actions, false objectives, while the technology of invisible surveillance and control is developed. CFR publications of 40 years ago discussed the RFID technologies now coming to fruition, and how false flag operations could be planned and used to convince the peons to accept gradual slavery in exchange for “security”.
Levers of power exist in finance. Wealth creates power and corrupts into acceptance. Follow the Ultimatemoney, and you will see the same names. Adjust your ladders accordingly.
This is the article linked above.
It draws attention, but only obliquely, to the wealth transfer, from the developed west, to the “emerging economies”, disguised as “saving the planet”, but in fact making no differnece to global CO2 levels.
That’s right,….. these thieving bastards know their own science is a fraud, and CO2 capture technology is not needed. In the name of Marxism, (for want of a better “ism”), they wish to transfer wealth away from the West, which in a reduced wealth state, would lose many freedoms, and be more controllable. The one thing that must be broken is the “individual” concept of western society.
The fact that “western financiers” funded the Bolsheviks, Hitler, Mao, and the ongoing USSR developement in the early days should tell that they are A-political. Totalitarian societies are easier to control than democracies. Today, “capitalism” is an illusion. To a large extent it is parasitic wealth redistribution.
The west is under attack, from within, as never before in history. Our leaders know this. They are part of the problem. They are quite prepared to hand it over, on a plate.
And this is the point of disbelief. It is so flagrant, so open, so obvious, so unbelievable.
Read on.
It was not just in Britain last week that we all shivered through pre-Christmas snow, ice and cold. Blizzards sweeping across Europe, from the Channel Tunnel to Moscow, killed more than 100 people. Even the beaches of Nice and the gondolas of Venice lay under a blanket of white.
Across the Atlantic, as the northern hemisphere was plunged into its third freezing winter in succession, violent snowstorms left more than two thirds of the US and almost the whole of Canada under December snow for the first time in decades. In the wake of that acrimonious shambles in Copenhagen, ever more questions are now being asked not only over the validity of the science behind the belief that man-made CO2 is causing runaway global warming but about the methods being used to meet that supposed threat.
In last week’s Sunday Telegraph Richard North and I wrote an article revealing the worldwide business interests of Dr Rajendra Pachauri who, as chairman since 2002 of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is the world’s “top climate official”. Our report was picked up by newspapers and blogs across the world, and was even the basis for a question put to Ban Ki-moon, the UN’s Secretary General, at a New York press conference. But nowhere did it provoke a greater storm than in India, where Dr Pachauri is director-general of The Energy and Resources Institute (Teri), based in New Delhi, the country’s most influential private body involved in climate-change issues and renewable energy. In addition, as we reported, Dr Pachauri also holds more than a score of positions with banks, universities and other institutions that benefit from the vast worldwide industry now based on measures to halt climate change.
In a series of press and television interviews, Dr Pachauri described our report as “a pack of lies”. He accused us of being part of that same “powerful vested interest” responsible for “Climategate”, the emails and other documents leaked from the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, which revealed the methods used by the small group of scientists at the heart of the IPCC to manipulate temperature data to show that the earth has been warming further than is justified by the evidence.
When asked whether he intended to take legal action over our article, Dr Pachauri replied that he hadn’t yet made up his mind. But Teri issued a press release listing its main complaints against the article.
A first point to emerge from these responses is how much of what we wrote they do not contradict. Dr Pachauri does not deny that he holds all the positions referred to in our article, such as giving advice on climate change to bodies ranging from major banks such as Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank to the Chicago Climate Change, the worlds’s largest dealer in buying and selling the right to emit CO2.
He and Teri insist, however, that all the money he receives for his services, such as 100,000 euros from Deutsche Bank and $80,000 from Toyota Motors are paid not to him personally but to his institute (and that he receives
no fee from the Chicago Climate Exchange). Teri denies that it
does not publish its accounts simply by stating that its accounts are supplied to the relevant tax authorities.
Dr Pachauri repeatedly denied that Teri still has any links with the Tata Group, India’s largest privately-owned business empire, with interests ranging from coal and steel to renewable energy, and which set up Teri as the Tata Energy Research Institute in 1974. He now claims that Teri has had no “direct links” with Tata since 1999 (or, in another interview, 2001). But it was not until 2003 that the name changed to The Energy and Resources Institute, and then a Teri spokesman explained that “we have not severed our links with the Tatas” and that the change of name was “only for convenience”.
Indeed one of the Tata group of companies is still listed among Teri’s corporate sponsors, several directors of Tata serve on Teri’s Business Council for Sustainable Development, and one senior director serves on Teri’s Advisory Board. Other links include the fact that Dr Pachauri and Ratan Tata, the head of the group, both serve on the Indian Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change, advising on all aspects of national climate policy.
In short, these initial responses to our article leave many questions unanswered. At the least it seems that Dr Pachauri’s position as the world’s “top climate official” has been earning a very substantial income for the institute of which he is director-general; and the only way to avoid further questioning must now be for both Dr Pachauri and Teri to come out into the open over all those issues that remain obscure.
For a start, we should be allowed to know what Dr Pachauri is paid by us all as chairman of the IPCC, a figure that remains confidential. Teri should make public its accounts, including details of all payments it has received from Dr Pachauri’s work for other organisations – particularly those that stand to benefit from policies arising directly or indirectly from the recommendations of the IPCC.
Nor is it clear why, on various occasions, the IPCC has listed trips made by Dr Pachauri as part of his “Outreach” as chairman, stating that the UN has paid for the “offsetting” of their carbon footprint, when the purpose of these meetings was to further the interests of Teri itself.
There is no question that Teri, an organisation employing 700 people, based in lavish offices near the exclusive residential enclave where Dr Pachauri lives, in one of the most expensive homes in Delhi, has become a very successful enterprise, with connections in the profitable field of “sustainable energy” all over the world.
It has, for instance, carried out two research contracts for Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative, which is helping to build the world’s largest “solar park” near the Indo-Pakistani border. Promoted under the Indian government’s drive for renewable energy, and partly-financed by “carbon credits” under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), this project is due to return an estimated $2 billion a year on an initial $10 billion investment.
Just how surreal the business of “carbon trading” has become is illustrated by another project, which has no direct connection with Dr Pachauri but which involves the plan by a Tata subsidiary to build one of the world’s largest coal-fired power stations in the state of Gujarat. Nearly $1 billion needed to build the 4 gigawatt Mundra plant is being supplied in cheap “green loans” by the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank (to both of which Dr Pachauri acts as an adviser), because the plant will emit CO2 at a “lower intensity” than older power stations in India. For the same reason, the plant will also qualify for a potential $560 million in “carbon credits” under the UN’s CDM scheme, which can then be sold on the world market.
If our own Government allows E.on to build a similar but much smaller coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth in Kent, however, we shall have to pay out millions of pounds through our electricity bills to buy those same “credits” which in India the UN hands out free – to help Tata build a plant which will be responsible for emitting 26 million tonnes a year of CO2, well over twice as much as Kingsnorth.
Similarly it is Tata which next month is to close down its Corus steel works at Redcar, to make a potential £600 million in “credits” from the carbon emissions this will save, while in India it will earn a similar amount in UN CDM “credits” by building a plant of similar capacity in Orissa. It will thus make a potential gain of £1.2 billion, at the expense of 1,700 jobs on Teesside, for no overall reduction in the amount of CO2 emitted to the atmosphere.
Truly, as the snow falls, does the business of saving the planet from global warming become more convoluted and more lucrative by the day.
What can I say? This is what we’re up against.
Truth
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_H2DePAZe2gA/Sz1ZJWjW0PI/AAAAAAAAK9s/B0w5EpMh9yo/s1600-h/baseline.png
Shucks! What’s gone wrong now?
Post immediate prior to this, James.
There’ll be a post but it’s difficult to word carefully.
This is the de-industrialisation-of-the-west, policy, in simple terms. The policy that MSM and certain bloggers that you visit, James, will never comment on. The policy pushed to infinity by the EU, to the point of fraudulent data and non-science. Bastard liars. EU wide poverty is their aim.
Post democratic, high tech, feudalism.
Now remind me, what factories have been sold in the recent past, some to Tata, where intellectual property (design) has been taken, but the production mothballed, and even Mandy with his bribes, was unable to convince them to retain production on this island.
Our carbon taxes, (already paying ‘em) are speeding our unemployment.
Merchant bankers earn fees for deals selling UK businesses, and at the margins, carbon trading exchanges collect fees. Politicians are bribed, or are too stupid to comprehend the totality of the scam, MSM is largely silent, and our society is screwed.
When are the sheep going to wake up?
Re James @ 12.30.
You misunderstood, James.
My post went to post-heaven at that time.
xxxl,
you’re right about all this. Let’s make 2010 the year of the fight-back. They are not invincible and we know their game-plan. Sure it’s like fighting a hydra, so we’ll have to learn to do what Hercules and Iolaus did.