PFAS Pollution By Military Watchdog Hassled At Airports

Upon news that the CEO of popular social media news site Telegram was arrested at the airport in France this week for refusing to censor news Israel feels threatened by, I'm feeling the urge to write about the galloping pace of information control across national borders. (I've linked to the article about this from The Cradle, another great news site which was just banned from both Facebook and Instagram.) 

I don't have time to pull that post together this morning as I have summer visitors. So instead I'm going repost a related report from my friend Pat Elder about being hassled at the airport in Osaka, Japan for his tenacious monitoring of PFAS pollution by the U.S. military. Hassled on behalf of TSA in the U.S., specifically. (Elder been hassled in Ireland at the airport, too.) 

With a massive PFAS spill recently in Brunswick and authorities stonewalling the public about the details, I know that endocrine-disrupting "forever chemicals" entering the water supply and ocean is top of mind for many of us in Maine.

VFP Tour - Osaka Airport - #13 August 23, 2023

They searched me for explosives in Osaka, Japan before I boarded a plane for the U.S.

The U.S. anti-terrorism program administered by Japanese officials is part of the Secondary Security Screening Selection (SSSS) program of the U.S. Transportation Security Administration.

By Pat Elder August 24, 2024

Japanese authorities confiscated my passport and used a swab to check my arms and legs for explosives.

The SSSS program has been used in an attempt to intimidate political activists critical of U.S. foreign policy.

After spending 3 weeks in Japan warning its citizens throughout the country of the dangers posed by the ongoing and reckless use of carcinogenic substances by the occupying forces of the United States military, I was subjected to harassment by Japanese authorities upon my exit from the country from Osaka on August 23, 2024.

I had initially been issued a boarding pass without the SSSS designation for seat 41A. Hawaii Airlines sent a message over the intercom at the Osaka airport, “Passenger Patrick Elder please report to Gate 30.” They issued me a new ticket for Seat 27A with the SSSS designation.

Secondary Security Screening Selection, or SSSS, is a designation by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) that flags passengers for extra security screening. There's no information about how individuals are chosen for SSSS. Peace activists Father John Dear and Sister Virgine Lawinger, Center for Constitutional Rights lawyers Barbara Olshansky and Nancy Chang, and various U.S. Green Party activists (like me) have been pulled aside for enhanced screening. Many of us have been tracked by the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, DOD, and various state police agencies.

The Japanese authorities acting on behalf of the U.S. government took my passport and stopped me from boarding. They led me into a separate room. They rubbed cotton swabs on my wrists and legs to test for explosives. They did the same for my shoes. They put the results in a machine. Could the procedure be used to collect DNA samples?

As it turned out, I was the last to board.

I told them I was a nonviolent Christian pacifist and that I would be the last guy to blow up a plane.

Here, they check for evidence of explosives on my leg.

Checking for explosives in my shoes.

The results were fed into a machine that checks for explosives.

The machine shown in the photo is produced by Rapiscan Systems, a wholly owned subsidiary of OSI Systems, Inc. The OSI Political Action Committee makes generous contributions to members of Congress involved in regulating the TSA.

I asked the stern Japanese agents why I was selected and they said it was an entirely random process, but I responded that I had been through the same treatment by Irish lackeys after addressing the American military’s poisoning of the European continent during a conference in Dublin in 2018.

I told the Japanese officials my bags are frequently searched and that I had been speaking in Japanese cities about contamination coming from U.S. bases. What could they say?

In Ireland, authorities confiscated my laptop and cell phone for a half hour. I suppose they downloaded everything they were looking for. Surveillance techniques have improved to the point today that they already know what is on our laptops and cell phones.

To be continued.....

Pat Elder's reporting on PFAS pollution around the globe is available here.

Airport "Security" In Our Brave New World

As I was preparing to write this post about creeping "security" measures at an airport near me came news that a suicidal gunman had killed one person and wounded several at the Los Angeles airport (LAX). Reports are the killer specifically asked people if they "were TSA" referring to the unarmed personnel who herd people through the checkpoints at airports since the Transportation Security Administration was created following the events of 9/11.

Passengers wait at Terminal 1. At least 118 flights en route to LAX were canceled or rerouted; 135 departing flights were canceled. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times / November 1, 2013)

Do you feel safe yet?

A friend wrote to me yesterday:

I was creeped out by the new security sequence you have to go through when you return to the Portland Airport.  The EXIT sign pointed me to some doors that slid open suddenly and then closed behind me .  I was in a small empty chamber like a prison cell.  

A sign said "Keep moving", so I advanced toward the next closed doors.  An electronic eye again opened the doors and closed them behind me, and I was in a second prison chamber, this one with a suspicious inspector sitting there.  

I  lumbered along, a 69 year old lady with a yellow backpack stuffed with clothes, and passed through, scot free, to the Portland Airport I was used to.  Reagan National Airport had nothing like that for people who'd flown in.  Why Maine? 

Any more thoughts on this?

Yes, Lynne, I have a few thoughts on this. My thoughts are about cameras and iris scans and other biometric pillaging of your former right to privacy. And dignity, really. 

My husband thinks most in the U.S. have given up any notion of a right to privacy rather easily, with not much more than a shrug. But I'm not so sure.

As for why Maine -- Because we're a border state? A coastal state? With a toothless media? Because the small scale of arrivals to Portland's airport is ideal for a trial run of more invasive technology before it rolls out at airports in large urban areas? Because control of our abundant natural resources is in the sights of 1%?

The scene Lynne described reminded me of unmanned checkpoints used in Palestine to impede travel. A friend who traveled in the West Bank told me that if metal hidden beneath layers of clothes set the alarm off, the whole line would be held up while people helped a bewildered elderly person find a hidden coin. No human in charge of the machine, who can decide to let people through. The cameras need no human operator on this end.

So control robots are what your taxes buy now, for use at home and abroad. You're taxed to pay for your own "security." And that of Israel. And Egypt. Et cetera. Technology for machines even more effective at controlling humans is "developing" rapidly. 

Yet a lonely man who was bullied through school and feels bullied by the TSA can arm himself with an assault rifle and bulletproof vest without any oversight at all. How convenient for the burgeoning security state when he snaps and goes on a violent rampage. 

Surveillance is everywhere, yet we who reside in the USA seem to be a little less safe from violence with each passing day.