Police State

TSA agent steals woman's jewelry. TSA blames woman for not watching her bag.

Never satisfied with the current level of the police state, researchers create a surveillance system that can they claim can predict what will happen next. But it can't predict. It can only apply probabilities. So now people are going to get arrested for something they did not do based on a probably calculated by a computer.

US customs official remove a Pakistan's most popular politician from a flight in Canada that was bound for New York because he wants to stop drone strikes in Pakistan. Why are US customs agents operating in Canada? When did the US border disappear, and if it disappeared, how come people aren't free to come and go at will?

"Customs and immigration officials refused to comment except to note that "our dual mission is to facilitate travel in the United States while we secure our borders, our people, and our visitors from those that would do us harm like terrorists and terrorist weapons, criminals, and contraband," and added that the burden is on the visitor "to demonstrate that they are admissible" and "the applicant must overcome all grounds of inadmissibility.""

That's funny. Government can only impede travel. It cannot facilitate it. And stopping this guy had nothing to do with securing our borders.

"There are several obvious points raised by this episode. Strictly on pragmatic grounds, it seems quite ill-advised to subject the most popular leader in Pakistan - the potential next Prime Minister - to trivial, vindictive humiliations of this sort. It is also a breach of the most basic diplomatic protocol: just imagine the outrage if a US politician were removed from a plane by Pakistani officials in order to be questioned about their publicly expressed political views. And harassing prominent critics of US policy is hardly likely to dilute anti-US animosity; the exact opposite is far more likely to occur."

No kidding. Republicans like to talk about Obama's apology tour, but Obama has increased US government arrogance and hostility to foreigners while in office, not decreased it. As if on cue:

"But the most important point here is that Khan's detention is part of a clear trend by the Obama administration to harass and intimidate critics of its drone attacks. As Marcy Wheeler notes, "this is at least the third time this year that the US has delayed or denied entry to the US for Pakistani drone critics.""

Nice of Greenwald to point this out.