The Transportation Insecurity Administration...

Over at Common Dreams there's another story about the TSA's watch list. It's written by an author and former diplomat who represented the United States to the UN, Vietnam, and so forth. Not a bad resume, although it's clear from the titles of his books and his choice of publisher that he's a leftist. He's claiming that he's on the watch list because of his politics, and that he can't seem to get off of it, or even get a solid answer as to why he's on it.

He says he "can't ignore this administration's efforts to purge and punish dissenters and opponents." I hadn't noticed any particular purging or punishing, so...

I did a little digging. He's also a leadership figure for the Giraffe Heroes Project, a play on words related to the title of his book (Stick your neck out: A Street-smart Guide to Creating Change in Your Community and Beyond).

The top three "Giraffe Heroes" on the project's website are Azim Khamisa, Plez Felix, and "Broad Meadows School Activists for Iqbal". He admits to having "met with Cambodians, Sudanese, Palestinians...", saying that you can't convince people to move toward peaceful solutions unless you understand who they are.

Granted, although some people just don't seem to be interested in moving towards peaceful solutions at all.

And he hasn't been an official diplomat for 25 years, which would mean he was serving in the Carter administration and left the year that Reagen was elected. Although I wasn't following politics at the time, I'm familiar with the events of the Carter Presidency, and characterizing them as a disaster with regard to terrorism would not be overstating the case. He did not stop his "peacemaking" even after leaving government service, meaning he continued to have unofficial contacts with "both sides".

All of a sudden, I find it completely plausible that this fellow is one or two degrees from a "person of interest". And that puts a slightly different spin on the fact that he's on the watch list.

Sure, he has the right to due process, and he's moving through that process. But I'm not prepared to automatically assume he's listed by mistake, or that the appropriate due process should result in his being removed from the "check very carefully" list under present circumstances.

Lesson? It pays to know who you're listening to. Sometimes, it makes a difference. It may not change the conclusion that the TSA is an often-incompetent, always-intrusive agency which considers the privacy rights of ordinary Americans a bug in the system to be eliminated as soon as reasonably possible. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and it's good to keep that in mind when considering whether to be outraged over a particular incident.

Posted on 2005-07-08 16:30:39.0 by matthew@triggerfinger.org

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