TSA Sued Over Desecration of Ohio Man's Mother's Cremated Remains

Ever since its inception the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) which serves as America’s airport Gestapo has come under fire for numerous transgressions. Whether it be feeling up children, shaking down old women in medical diapers, intimidating hapless travelers or stealing their belongings it is a big government abomination of the worst type. In a great example of not letting a good crisis go to waste, the TSA was launched in the tense aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks and has turned into a permanent fixture in an increasingly fascist America. It represents the worst aspects of the Department of Homeland Security, a bloated monstrosity that has absolutely no place in a free society. Were there political leadership with integrity and a respect for American values it would be dismantled very rapidly and replaced with less onerous forms of security.

Now an Ohio man is suing the government goon squad for desecrating the ashes of his beloved mother who had been cremated. According to a story from the website of Cleveland TV station FOX 8 that is entitled “Lawsuit: Man claims mom’s cremated remains found dumped in suitcase after TSA inspection”:

A Cleveland man had carefully planned an emotional trip to take his mother’s cremated remains to a final resting place, but instead he says the journey turned horrific and upsetting.

Attorney Adeladi Williams says his client, Mr. Shannon Thomas, was flying from Cleveland Hopkins International Airport to San Juan, Puerto Rico in early October 2012.

It was Mr. Thomas’ mother’s last wish to have her ashes spread in the crystal waters of the Caribbean Sea.

But a lawsuit filed in Federal Court in Cleveland Thursday claims a disturbing incident destroyed that wish and violated his rights.

According to court documents, Mr. Thomas had followed all of the guidelines and properly packed his mother’s “heavy and sturdy” urn inside of his suitcase for check-in.

The urn was tightly screwed closed and he says it was packed with extra clothing for padding and protection.

But when he arrived in Puerto Rico, he found his mother ashes dumped inside of the suitcase, all over his clothing and with a TSA notice of inspection.

The lawsuit, seeking $750,000 in damages, names multiple defendants including “The United States of America, Transportation Security Administration, Attorney General of the United States, Department of Justice, 10 agents or employees with the TSA, and 10 other unnamed persons who had contact with his luggage.

It states that “The United States is liable for damage to the urn and his personal effects,” and says the actions of  the TSA agents and others “constitute intentional and/or negligent infliction of emotional distress.”

A TSA spokesperson told FOX 8 that they cannot comment on pending litigation, and therefore cannot say what exactly happened to this urn.

The TSA is exactly the type of organization that would thrive in Nazi Germany or the old Soviet Union. It provides a place of gainful employment for those inclined to be bullies and the existence of such an agency in what was once a free country is yet another tragedy of our times. In a free country government thugs and goons do not conduct random searches and engage in the molestation of powerless travelers who face arrest if they do not submit. It is not going to stop at airports either.  Whenever there is another real terrorist attack on The Homeland - and there will be at some point - it will expand into sports stadiums, public venues and your local shopping malls as well. The defense think tank the RAND Corporation produced a study years ago that could serve as the blueprint.

There is however a glimmer of hope in that a number of the nation's airports are now just saying no to the TSA goon squads. According to a story from The Liberty Crier entitled “Dropping The TSA: 19th Airport Joins More Efficient Private Screening Program”:

Tired of long lines at TSA airport checkpoints? Today, the Orlando Sanford International Airport (SFB) began a transition to private security screeners rather than Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screeners in a change that promises more efficient security measures.

SFB just joined the TSA’s Screening Partnership Program (SPP) that allows airports to replace TSA screeners with more flexible and cost-effective screening services provided by private companies and overseen by the TSA. While this may seem strange to many Americans who have grown accustomed to TSA-manned checkpoints, it really isn’t abnormal for airports to manage their own security with government regulation and oversight. After all, most European airports are run this way, and now 19 airports in the U.S. are as well.

While privatization does have any number of pitfalls it does offer one critical aspect that does not exist at the federal government level in the USA! USA! USA! anymore: accountability even though it is slight.

Fear Rules as TSA Goons Now Empowered to Steal Your Cellphone

With the latest wave of ginned-up terrorism alerts, this one being due to the ominous and mysterious Muslim menace of ISIS which could be straight out of Hollywood, the TSA goons at airports will be unleashed anew. The Department of Homeland Security's airport Gestapo has kept a rather low profile lately since the heady days of humiliating old women in medical diapers, herding attractive women into a side room for "extra" screening and feeling up children as well as stealing the possessions of passengers but the renewed climate of fear-mongering is about to unleash the goons with impunity once again. This is the way it happens in any authoritarian society and we are well on our way there on the great star-spangled lemming farm.

The buildup has been going on for a few weeks now with reports that the "terrorists" had developed some sort of new bomb that had the ability to befuddle the knuckle-dragging dumb-asses who taxpayers are paying good salaries to in addition to whatever they are able to skim in terms of confiscated items. The prize of the year will be any sort of costly cellphone, tablet, computer or other device that happens to have a dead battery. I don't know if you travel much but it is difficult to keep the damned things charged if you need them for communications, work or entertainment. It is just the latest form of state sanctioned harassment to get people to submit to government thugs.

According to a story by The Guardian that's entitled "US-bound passengers may have to switch on mobile phones for security":

Passengers using airports that offer direct flights to the US may be forced to switch on their mobile phones and other electronic devices to prove to security officials that they do not contain explosives, it was announced on Sunday.

“During the security examination, officers may also ask that owners power up some devices, including cell phones,” the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said in a post on its website. It warned: “Powerless devices will not be permitted onboard the aircraft. The traveller may also undergo additional screening.”

The TSA did not disclose which airports would be conducting the additional screening. It was reported last week that passengers at British airports travelling to the US were facing extra checks on phones. Belgian officials said passengers there would also have devices checked.

AND

The chairman of the UK parliament's intelligence and security committee, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, said the increased airport security measures were "unavoidable".

 riting in the Sunday Telegraph, he said jihadi extremists were deploying "devilish technical skill" to create ever more sophisticated devices to evade existing security measures. And he warned of the dangers of "complacency" among the public in the face of the failure of the terrorists to mount any successful mass casualty attack in the UK since the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005.

 The new airport measure is the first to be confirmed since Jeh Johnson, the US Homeland Security secretary, warned last week that enhanced security checks would be implemented imminently at "certain overseas airports with direct flights into the United States".

"We are sharing recent and relevant information with our foreign allies and are consulting the aviation industry,” Johnson said on 2 July. “We will work to ensure these necessary steps pose as few disruptions to travelers as possible.”

It may be strictly at "overseas" checkpoints but it is coming soon to an airport near you and eventually even your shopping malls where Kevlar coated goons will soon be shaking down shoppers. Don't laugh - the influential RAND Corporation produced a report on the "terrorist" threat to shopping centers years ago - just think how much money that there is to be made in retrofitting these malls with all of the latest high-tech costly surveillance equipment from corporations that will ensure that they fund the campaigns of all local politicians who will sign off on them.

Not that it isn’t possible that there would be an attempt to blow up an airplane, our wonderful US neocon foreign policy has ensured that us Americans will all be hated for generations if not centuries due to our ongoing war on Muslims and lock-step unity with an Israeli right-wing government that is a vicious and unaccountable human rights abusing racist shithole that under Bibi Netanyahu pushes the envelope near daily on barbaric behavior. The most recent being of course the whipping of the public up into a bloodthirsty frenzy after the unfortunate and tragic murder of three young Israelis that has an already fanatical segment of the population on the verge of conducting pogroms (just like the Nazis) and engaging in revenge murders. This is a great way to win hearts and minds in the Middle East and thanks to our monstrous and arrogant political class the seeds have been sown for the coming whirlwind.

That being said, the greatest way to manufacture consent among the sheeple in the United States of Scared Shitless is to play the fear card and nothing quite sells like the demonizing of Muslims to sell an increasingly closing trap of police state enforcement. I have previously mentioned something that I once read in a book called "American Terminator: Myths, Movies and Global Power" which is a series of essays examines the role of movies in shaping and reinforcing the basis for a mythical American exceptionalism and Empire. The following passage is from that book which I recommend to anybody with an interest in just how popular culture serves as a delivery device that is integral in the American indoctrination process. I excerpt the following:

Fear is essential: 'Be afraid, be very afraid' is the American condition. To live in America is to be beset by fear, anxiety and insecurity, to be surrounded by potential harm, enemies and evil intent. And the wolf is always at the door. A nation of optimists is the more usual self-representation of America. Repetitively, Hollywood films conclude with a resolution, a rescue, and the winners ride off into the sunset or snuggle into a warm embrace that reassures us they will live happily ever after. The formulaic ending, however, is necessary because the plot, the narrative, is founded on and propelled by fear and anxiety, the dark essential underpinning of the American condition. For America fear is an original, natural condition, the inescapable birth rite (and birth right), the inherited condition of a fragile existence that must constantly be defended. Without fear there is no America; constant recourse to fear is the motivating force that determines its actions and reactions.

And that is exactly what this is all about FEAR in an election cycle. If you can recall last year during the run-up to Obama and Kerry’s great war on Syria that was rudely preempted by the hated Russian leader Vladimir Putin (the genesis of the Ukraine push for WW III) the corrupt state-corporate media was jacking up the fear with more lurid tales of new age bombs. I particularly enjoyed the one about how the devious jihadists were planning to attack targets by carrying surgically implanted bombs that are able to evade detection. Hey, I saw the Dark Knight too where the Joker was able to successfully pull this off and blow up the Gotham City Police Department but come on now, when does this stuff just become so over the top that it is rejected outright as the horseshit that it is?  Because nobody called is as such the surgically implanted bombs story is back again.

But it all serves an ultimate purpose and the fear of a Muslim terror attack on poor, white Christian Americans because they hate us for our way of life and our precious freedoms is a political winner, it would be all the more of one if there is an actual event which would provide the rationale for the coming lockdown of US society and send the hordes of government goons out to pick up all of the trouble-makers.