Stasi Indemnification Act of 2011

This is not a joke.  It's real.  HR 495 is before Congress.  This bill will indemnify informants from civil liability for their actions.

Please ask your Congresspeople to reject HR 495, the Stasi Indemnification Act of 2011.  The images below are from a PDF file that can be downloaded from homeland.house.gov:

Ghosts Carrying Machine Guns

“It’s 9/11 and people are seeing ghosts. They are seeing things that aren’t there.” (FBI thug speaking to Shoshana Hebshi)

I would submit that a greater problem is hallucinating ghosts carrying machine guns and pointing them at people.

Frontier Expresses No Regrets, No Remorse, No Apologies over the Arrest and Strip-Search of 3 Paying Passengers

I was going to blog today about how the Mall of America has ingratiated itself into the informer network of our American Stasi, better known as the Department of Homeland Security.  That can wait.

Yesterday we read about how three brown passengers who had done nothing wrong (other than two who had committed the apparent crime of needing to use an airplane lavatory) were arrested at gunpoint, handcuffed, searched, strip-searched, interrogated and held for hours without counsel or family.  Not only is this how our government is now treating its citizens, we read today that Frontier airlines offers no regrets or apologies for delivering its paying customers to the government to abuse in this manner:

Shoshana Hebshi-Holt, arrested on Frontier flight on 9/11 anniversary, speaks out

Frontier Airlines did not get in touch with her or apologize. In a statement, the company said, “The primary responsibility of our flight crews … the pilots and flight attendants … is the safety of all passengers on board the aircraft at all times.”

The company went on to say that only the two men had been reported to authorities for suspicious activity and all other “actions taken by federal authorities after the report were their own and were made without any further involvement from Frontier or any company employee.”

One way deal with pariahs in our midst is to stigmatize them.  We can neutralize the American Stasi by shunning those who do business with it, especially those companies that willingly deliver their innocent customers for illegal search and interrogation.

One aspect of this is the boycott:

• Were you going to purchase a ticket on Frontier?  Don't.
• Have you purchased a ticket on Frontier?  Cancel it.
• Have you purchased a ticket on another airline?  Call Frontier and explain why their competition got your business.  There are several numbers below -- call each of them, every time.

The second aspect is non-violent protest, airline style:

• Call Frontier's telephone reservations line (I would suggest blocking your caller ID first) and make a bogus reservation.  Ask lots of questions, change the time and/or route mid-call, decide that you want to add your family, etc.  When it finally reaches the point where you would actually have to provide your credit card information:  "Before we finalize this, may I ask you one question?  Are brown people allowed to use a lavatory on your airplane?"  Let them answer, then excuse yourself:  "I'm sorry but I've been thinking about this, and I just don't want to end up like those people in Detroit.".  Thank them for their time, hang up, lather, rinse, repeat.
• Call every Frontier phone number you can find (several below) and explain why you will not do business with them,.
• If you are passing through an airport ticket lobby, stop at the Frontier desk and explain why you did not purchase your ticket on Frontier.  Ask if they have comment cards, and fill one out if it is offered.
• Do likewise if you pass by a Frontier gate in a concourse.  Tell them why you won't be boarding at their gate, and offer to fill out a comment card.

A Stasi needs informants to survive, prisoners to intimidate and abuse.  By pressuring its informer network (of which Frontier Airlines is a bona fide member) to shun the Stasi, we can defeat the Stasi itself.

Frontier phone numbers, emails and contact link:

• 800-432-1359 (reservations)
• 866-263-2759 (frequent flyer program)
• 800-432-1359 (frequent flyer program)
• 800-432-1359 (customer relations)
• 800-243-6297 (agency desk)
• 800-952-7637 ("Best Care" business program / assistance)
• 800-243-6297 ("Best Care" business program / assistance)
• 888-601-4296 (group desk)
• 800-892-6580, Option 5 (cargo)
• 800-265-5505 (corporate office)
• 317-484-6000 (investor relations)
• 866-956-0702 (gift card orders)
• Company Store
• Cargo
• Media
• Frontier Customer Contact Link 

And finally we close this post with couple pictures, both arrested by their Stasi, their situations differing only in time and degree -- Sigrid Paul visiting her former Stasi prison in Berlin, and Shoshana Hebshi, released on Sept. 11 from the American Stasi Interrrogation Center at DTW:

Two Birds of a Feather

No, we are NOT the Fatherland!

I've been concerned for some time with substantial similarities between the Department of Homeland Security, along with its hideously ugly stepchild, the Transportation Security Administration, and the worst that Germany had to offer in the 20th century.

Today we were served with yet another reminder that the Stasi, East Germany's feared Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Mfs, Ministry for State Security, best known as the "Stasi"), did not die in 1990.  Rather it lie dormant in the minds of evil men until it resurfaced in 2002 as the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  Sadly the similarities have evolved in practice as well as in name.

Today I learned of a fellow citizen, American as I, probably darker in complexion, who was taken off an airplane without warrant or probable cause, strip-searched, her belongs searched, and interrogated for several hours without benefit of counsel and without being allowed to contact her family.

This is America?  It is not my America.  My father didn't spend 20 years in the U.S. military so that innocent women could be hauled off an airplane and strip-searched on the basis of a rumor.  Earlier generations of my family did not serve -- and die -- in the European and Pacific theaters so that the worst institutions of our enemies could be brought home and re-established in America.

It is time for this to end.  We must abolish our very own Ministerium für Staatssicherheit and re-establish the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as the supreme law of the land.

For an account of what transpired on the Detroit tarmac yesterday, it is best that you read the victim's own account of the transgression:

Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit

Until the victim's own account surfaced, our American Stasi tried to pass it off as just another case of excessive lavatory use:

Police board Frontier Airlines flight at Metro Airport with guns drawn after suspicious behavior

Police Meet Plane At Detroit Metro Airport: 3 In Custody After Plane Lands, Later Released

No charges against 3 detained at Detroit airport


One of the men removed reportedly had spent an entire ten minutes in the lavatory.  The woman who was cuffed and strip-searched apparently never even used the lavatory.  She just happened to be of dark complexion and sitting in the window seat of the same row as the two men, whom she did not know.

We must shut down the American Stasi and return to the rule of law -- now.  Until then the terrorists have won.