Man boards plane at IAH with loaded gun in carry-on

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news%2Flocal&id=7848683

Man boards plane at IAH with loaded gun in carry-on
Friday, December 17, 2010
Kevin Quinn

HOUSTON (KTRK) — TSA checkpoints at airports are at the front lines of preventing terrorism. When you go through security, you expect to be scanned and searched. And you expect TSA to prevent contraband from getting on planes, but as we’ve learned, that doesn’t always happen.

Houston businessman Farid Seif says it was a startling discovery. He didn’t intend to bring a loaded gun on a flight out of Houston and can’t understand how TSA screeners didn’t catch it.

Nearing the height of last year’s Christmas travel season, TSA screeners at Bush Intercontinental Airport somehow missed a loaded pistol, one that was tucked away inside a carry-on computer bag.

“I mean, this is not a small gun,” Seif said. “It’s a .40 caliber gun.”

Seif says it was an accident which he didn’t realize until he arrived at his destination. He says he carries the glock for protection but forgot to remove it from his bag. He reported the incident as soon as he landed, shocked at the security lapse.

“There’s nothing else in there. How can you miss it? You cannot miss it,” Seif said.

Authorities tell ABC News the incident is not uncommon, but how often it occurs is a closely guarded government secret. Experts say every year since the September 11 attacks, federal agencies have conducted random, covert tests of airport security.

A person briefed on the latest tests tells ABC News the failure rate approaches 70 percent at some major airports. Two weeks ago, TSA’s new director said every test gun, bomb part or knife got past screeners at some airports.

“It’s very concerning. I’m very scared. First of al, I can’t even believe it could happen,” traveler Joy Mansfield said.

“It makes you wonder what exactly all the security hoopla is all about if a loaded gun can go through,” traveler Leeza Erfesoglou said.

KTRK’s Aviation Security Expert Jim Conway says screeners have a demanding job and are susceptible to fatigue, staring for hours at monitors while looking for prohibited items.

“Look, this is simply human error,” Conway said. “When something like this happens, it’s human error. I mean, these folks are doing the best job they can.”

Seif and others say that’s not good enough, not when lives are on the line.

A representative for the Houston Airport System would not comment on the security breach at Bush Intercontinental Airport.

A TSA spokesperson says the agency has conducted an investigation, saying remedial training was provided to the security officers involved in the incident. Advanced imaging technology and more stringent pat downs have also since been implemented.

(Copyright ©2010 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

Full body scanners that destroy DNA, pat-down searches that border on groping and restrictions on opened bottles of water, but a .40S&W Glock breezes right through? And a 70% failure rate with guns, knives and bomb parts?

Gosh … I sure feel safer because TSA is on the job.

“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
~ Benjamin Franklin

… End of Line …

Christmas 2010

I just wanted to say that if you didn’t get a gift from me, it doesn’t mean that I don’t like you.

I am not one of those people that have to buy something for everyone whether they want it or not. The few gifts that I did give were things that people had specifically said they wanted, but where unable to acquire on their own.

Merry Christmas to all of you. Hug your loved ones. That’s all that really matters anyway.

… End of Line …

Easy bread that tastes GREAT

Ingredients:

2 cups of water – 110F
1 1/2 tablespoons yeast
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup oil
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 cups whole wheat flour
3 cups white flour

Instructions:

1. Dissolve the sugar in the warm water in a large mixing bowl. The water temperature is important – hot enough to dissolve the sugar, but not so hot that it kills the yeast.
2. Add yeast to sugar water and allow to proof. The yeast should turn the sugar water foamy. 10 minutes is usually sufficient.
3. Add salt and oil to the mixture
4. Stir in flour one cup at a time to make dough. This step is much easier if you use a mixing machine with bread hooks.
5. After all of the flour is mixed in, remove the dough from the bowl and lightly grease the bowl with a thin film of crisco or vegetable oil, replace the dough ball and turn it one to coat the entire surface.
6. Allow the dough to rise for 1 hour.
7. Punch the dough down and knead for a few minutes.
8. Divide the dough into two loaves and place in greased 9″x5″ loaf pans.
9. Allow the loaves to rise for 30 minutes.
10. Bake at 350F for 30 minutes.
11. Allow to cool a bit, slice and enjoy.

If you don’t like whole wheat you can white flour for all 6 cups of flour, but whole wheat is better for you. I haven’t tried this with 6 cups of whole wheat, but I suspect that that would be a bit heavy.

Bread made with all white flour. Sorry - no pic of the wheat version.

Yum!

… End of Line …

Every once in a while …

… something happens that defies ALL logic.

I have absolutely NO IDEA how to respond to what I found in my inbox today.

… End of Line …

Today

Today sucked like a day hasn’t sucked in a LONG time, and the best part is, it’s not over yet. Hooray for late night work after a total debacle at the datacenter that everyone loves to hate.

… End of Line …

Free disaster preparedness ebook for bloggers

http://www.americanpreppersnetwork.com/2010/08/all-survival-information-youll-ever.html

… End of Line …

Pickup Trucks

I’ve been shopping for a diesel powered pickup for a couple of months now and have come to the conclusion that people that buy new trucks are retards.

What do I mean? Well, two things.

1) A new 4×4 diesel pickup will run into the $50,000 range. That’s half a house.
2) It seems from the used truck market that 95% of people that buy new 4×4 super duty trucks buy them to compensate for a small penis.

Allow me to elaborate …

The overwhelming majority of pickup trucks that I have found on the used market are 4×4, diesel powered, crew cab (that means they have a useful back seat) and … a SHORT BED!?!?!??

There are two types of pickup beds – long and short. Long beds are built to accommodate 4×8 sheets of plywood, sheetrock, and virtually EVERYTHING ELSE in the construction world, while still being able to close the bed.

Short beds are less than 7 feet long and aren’t good for much of anything other than driving around and hauling small things. They’re not suitable for pulling a fifth wheel trailer (one of the reasons I’m shopping for one), hauling building materials, or really anything else. I did see a commercial for GMC that showed a SWB pickup with a round bail of hay in the bed. Yay. I guess they can do that.

So, in short, who orders a $50,000+ pickup truck and neuters it before they even get it by putting a toy bed on it? That’s rhetorical of course, but the answer is stupid people.

*&@!#$%*

… End of Line …

Good site

I found this site this morning by accident. Good reading.

http://www.dailyprepper.com/

… End of Line …

Economic Hitmen

… End of Line …

Is wikileaks a CIA front?

I ran across this a few weeks ago. I don’t know that I agree or don’t, but it’s interesting reading.

CIA, Mossad and Soros Behind Wikileaks « TRUTH ◉ RSS ◉

Suspicions abound that Wikileaks is part of U.S. cyber-warfare operations

Cyber warfare involving the CIA and Mossad.

WMR has learned from Asian intelligence sources that there is a strong belief in some Asian countries, particularly China and Thailand, that the website Wikileaks, which purports to publish classified and sensitive documents while guaranteeing anonymity to the providers, is linked to U.S. cyber-warfare and computer espionage operations, as well as to Mossad’s own cyber-warfare activities.

Wikileaks claims to have decrypted video footage of a U.S. Predator air strike on civilians in Afghanistan and that covert U.S. State Department agents followed Wikileaks’s editor from Iceland to Norway in a surveillance operation conducted jointly by the United States and Iceland. Iceland’s financially-strapped government recently announced a policy of becoming a haven for websites that fear political oppression and censorship in their home countries. However, in the case of Wikileaks, countries like China and Thailand are suspicious of the websites’ actual “ownership.”

Wikileaks says it intends to show its video at an April 5 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC but that its presenters may be detained or arrested before that time. WMR’s sources believe the Wikileaks “militancy” in the face of supposed surveillance appears fake.

Our Asian intelligence sources report the following: “Wikileaks is running a disinformation campaign, crying persecution by U.S. intelligence- when it is U.S. intelligence itself. Its [Wikileaks'] activities in Iceland are totally suspect.” Wikileaks claims it is the victim of a new COINTELPRO [Counter Intelligence Program] operation directed by the Pentagon and various U.S. intelligence agencies. WMR’s sources believe that it is Wikileaks that is part and parcel of a cyber-COINTELPRO campaign, such as that proposed by President Obama’s “information czar,” Dr. Cass Sunstein.

In January 2007, John Young, who runs Cryptome, a site that publishes a wealth of sensitive and classified information, left Wikileaks, claiming the operation was a CIA front. Young also published some 150 email messages sent by Wikileaks activists on cryptome. They include a disparaging comment about this editor by Wikileaks co-founder Dr. Julian Assange of Australia. Assange lists as one of his professions “hacker.” His German co-founder of Wikileaks uses a pseudonym, “Daniel Schmitt.”

Wikileaks claims it is “a multi-jurisdictional organization to protect internal dissidents, whistleblowers, journalists and bloggers who face legal or other threats related to publishing” [whose] primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we are of assistance to people of all nations who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources.”

In China, Wikileaks is suspected of having Mossad connections. It is pointed out that its first “leak” was from an Al Shabbab “insider” in Somalia. Al Shabbab is the Muslim insurgent group that the neocons have linked to “Al Qaeda.”

Asian intelligence sources also point out that Assange’s “PhD” is from Moffett University, an on-line diploma mill and that while he is said to hail from Nairobi, Kenya, he actually in from Australia where his exploits have included computer hacking and software piracy.

WMR has confirmed Young’s contention that Wikileaks is a CIA front operation. Wikileaks is intimately involved in a $20 million CIA operation that U.S.-based Chinese dissidents that hack into computers in China. Some of the Chinese hackers route special hacking program through Chinese computers that then target U.S. government and military computer systems. After this hacking is accomplished, the U.S. government announces through friendly media outlets that U.S. computers have been subjected to a Chinese cyber-attack. The “threat” increases an already-bloated cyber-defense and offense budget and plays into the fears of the American public and businesses that heavily rely on information technology.

It is also pointed out that on Wikileaks advisory board is Ben Laurie, a one-time programmer and Internet security expert for Google, which recently signed a cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and has been charged by China with being part of a U.S. cyber-espionage campaign against China. Other Wikileaks advisory members are leading Chinese dissidents, including Wan Dan, who won the 1998 National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Democracy Award; Wang Youcai, founder of the Chinese Democracy Party; Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley, member of the advisory board of the International Campaign for Tibet, and commentator on the George Soros-affiliated Radio Free Asia; and Tibetan exile and activist Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang.

Our sources in Asia believe that Wikileaks ran afoul of their CIA paymasters after it was discovered that some of Wikileaks’s “take” was being diverted to Mossad instead of to their benefactors at Langley. After a CIA cur-off in funding, “Daniel Schmitt” took over and moved the Wikileaks operation to Belgium and Sweden with hopes of making a more secure base in Iceland.

There are strong suspicions that Wikileaks is yet another Soros-funded “false flag” operation on the left side of the political spectrum. WMR has learned that after former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) decided to oppose Soros’s choice of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s deputy Mark Malloch Brown as President of the World Bank, succeeding the disgraced Paul Wolfowitz, Soros put the Wikileaks operation into high gear. “Daniel Schmitt” hacked into Coleman’s supporters list, stealing credit card info, addresses, and publishing the “take” on Wikileaks. Democrat Al Franken, who was strongly backed by Soros, defeated Coleman in a legally-contested and very close election.

It is also believed by informed sources that Soros is behind the operation to move Wikileaks to Iceland. By becoming a power in Iceland, Soros can prevent Icelanders from paying back the British and Dutch investors in Icelandic online Ponzi scheme banking and continue his all-out war against British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has, in turn, targeted Soros for betting against pound sterling.

Iceland is classic prey for Soros. The Icelandic krona has been decimated as a currency and has no where to go but up in value, especially if the British pound and the euro depreciate. Soros is currently talking down the euro, planning its fall and shorting it, just like he did versus the pound in London in the 1980s. After the UK’s and Europe’s currencies are devalued, Soros will buy every Euro note in sight, thus making trillions.

Soros and his Wikileaks friends have in Iceland a practically unregulated banking system desperate for an influx of capital — money that will come from the exiled Russian tycoons in Israel, London and the United States. Israeli investors like Bank Leumi, and awash in siphoned-off Bernard Madoff cash, will do their bit for this smash-and-grab operation by Soros’s Quantum-linked hedge funds.

With Wikileaks firmly ensconced in Iceland, the “brave” and much-heralded information leakers will run an international blackmail operation against Soros’s foes and launch computer break-ins against Soros’s business rivals and non-Quantum banks. Wikileaks will be used as the info-hitmen against President Obama’s and Rahm Emanuel’s enemies in the 2012 re-election campaign.

From Iceland, Soros will be well-positioned to gain control over the massive mineral resources under the melting ice sheet of Greenland. Under the ice are the only major rare-earth deposits outside of China and with such minerals at his disposal, Soros can control the world’s electronics industries. This past week’s volcanic activity in Iceland could, however, disrupt or destroy Soros’s plans to establish and control a North American-European gateway in Iceland.

The following are some of the emails Young revealed in his exposure of Wikileaks’s CIA connections (as well as to the Russian “phishing” Mafia, an operation run by Russian-Israeli Jews using Israel as a base) [Note: in the second email, "JYA" is a reference to John Young Associates]:

To: John Young
From: Wikileaks
Subject: martha stuart pgp
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 12:20:25 -0500

—–BEGIN PGP MESSAGE—–
Version: None

J. We are going to fuck them all. Chinese mostly, but not entirely a feint. Invention abounds. Lies, twists and distorts everywhere needed for protection. Hackers monitor Chinese and other intel as they burrow into their targets, when they pull, so do we.

Inxhaustible supply of material. Near 100,000 documents/emails a day. We’re going to crack the world open and let it flower into something new. If fleecing the CIA will assist us, then fleece we will. We have pullbacks from NED, CFR, Freedomhouse and other CIA teats. We have all of pre 2005 afghanistan. Almost all of india fed. Half a dozen foreign ministries. Dozens of political parties and consulates, worldbank, apec, UN sections, trade groups, tibet and fulan dafa associations and… russian phishing mafia who pull data everywhere. We’re drowing. We don’t even know a tenth of what we have or who it belongs to. We stopped storing it at 1Tb.
——————————————-
From: Julian Assange
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 13:40:14 +0000
To: funtimesahead[a t]lists.riseup.net
Subject: [WL] cryptome disclosure

[This is a restricted internal development mailinglist for w-i-k-i-l-e-a-k-s-.-o-r-g. Please do not mention that word directly in these discussions; refer instead to 'WL'. This list is housed at riseup.net, an activist collective in Seattle with an established lawyer and plenty of backbone.]

No idea what JYA was saying!

It’s clear to me however, that he was not trying to protect people’s identities with his xxxxx’ing, but rather trying to increase the sexiness of the document. Perhaps he feels WL is a threat to the central status mechanism in his life? I think he just likes the controversy.

He may have done us a great favor. There’s a lot of movement in that document. It’s a little anarchist, but I think it generally reads well and sounds like people doing something they care about.

Btw, I suggest we be careful with Wayne Madsen too. He seems to be another case of someone who was fantastic a few years ago, but recently has started to see conspiracies everywhere. Both cases possibly age related.

I am not spending any more thought on it. Next week is going to be busy. The weeks earlier stories will be already done and that’ll set the agenda for the rest of the week, not jya’s attention seeker.

I’m willing to handle calls for .au, although my background may make S a better bet.
——————————————-

… End of Line …

Return top