“The U.S. government has used the merger-approval process to increase its influence over the telecom industry, bringing more companies under its oversight and gaining a say over activities as fundamental as equipment purchases.

“The leverage has come from a series of increasingly restrictive security agreements between telecom companies and national-security agencies that are designed to head off threats to strategically significant networks and maintain the government’s ability to monitor communications, according to a review of the public documents and lawyers who have negotiated the agreements.

“The security agreements, which arise in some deals involving foreign companies, stretch back more than a decade and compel them to honor requests to access their systems. What’s new is that consolidation in the industry and an influx of overseas investment have left much of the industry under the government’s sway.

“The merger agreements shed light on the complicated relationship between telecom companies and the national-security establishment amid a growing debate over the extensive collection of phone and Internet traffic by U.S. spy agencies.”

So the anti-trust process, which was designed a century ago to prevent monopolies, instead centralizes everything around the government monopoly. Ain’t that neat for the government! More:

“Three of the top four wireless carriers now operate under such agreements after Japan’s SoftBank Corp. 9984.TO -1.92% took over Sprint Corp. S -0.80% in a $21.6 billion deal last month and German-owned T-Mobile USA TMUS -0.63% merged with MetroPCS Communications Inc. this past spring. Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon Communications Inc. VZ -0.34% and Vodafone Group VOD.LN -1.31% PLC, has been operating under a security agreement since its creation in 2000.”

And note that last date: 2000. So this government obsession with taking over all communications, and snooping on all of us relentlessly, began even before the 9/11 attacks in 2001. After those attacks, President Bush panicked and got Congress to repeal the Bill of Rights with the unconstitutional, unconscionable and traitorous USA “PATRIOT” Act. The Republican House and the Democratic Senate passed it, so it was a bipartisan assault on our liberties.

Oh, another word for corporatism is fascism. He’s the sort who now rule us:

Writing here yesterday, I insisted that, in his State of the Union Address, President Obama must order the end of the TSA molestations of air travelers, especially of grandmothers and young girls.

Instead, he joked about it! Watch this short YouTube:

Did you notice California’s Rep. Nancy Pelosi, formerly the House Speaker, laughing! So was Vice President Joe Biden. Of course, as members of the Ruling Elite, they either take government planes or, when out office, private planes. So they don’t have to face being molested by the TSA Gestapo, nor watch the molestation of their children or grandparents. They’re insulated from what’s really happening in this once-free country. Both of them are Democrats.

But notice that new House Speaker John Boehner, a Republican, didn’t laugh. He must have read the speech beforehand and knew that if he laughed, he would outrage the voters who think Republicans will change things. They won’t. Otherwise, their first act in office would have been to pass a bill abolishing the molesting TSA Gestapo. They didn’t.

Obama’s context was high-speed rail, including the boondoggle here in California that won’t be built — despite what he said — because of the state and federal budget deficits.

His joke was that, by building it, passengers could avoid the TSA airport “pat-downs.” He lied. In fact, the TSA already has expanding its groping authority to America’s railroads. It boasts on its own Web site:

The mission of TSA’s Rail Passenger Security group is to protect the nation’s railroad passengers, employees, and properties.

TSA Gauleiter John Pistole said in an interview with USA Today:

“Given the list of threats on subways and rails over the last six years going on seven years, we know that some terrorist groups see rail and subways as being more vulnerable because there’s not the type of screening that you find in aviation,” he said. “From my perspective, that is an equally important threat area”….

Pistole said he wants TSA workers, including 47,000 screeners at 450 airports, to operate as a “national-security, counterterrorism organization, fully integrated into U.S. government efforts.”

“I want to take TSA to the next level,” Pistole said.

And that next level is higher tyranny.

Only we Americans can stop this bipartisan assault on our freedom to travel unmolested by government goons. We need a left-right coalition to abolish the TSA, the Germanic-named Homeland — Heimat in German — Security Department, the molestations, the pat-downs, the scanners that show people naked and keep recordings of the pictures, and all the rest.

We need to take them to court, as Gov. Jesse Ventura has done. We need to stop flying to put financial pressure on the airlines to get them to lobby the government to return airline security to completely private forces.

And we need to relentlessly ridicule Obama, Pistole, ex-Prez Bush, Boehner, Pelosi and the other bipartisan goons who keep us in chains. If the regime jokes about tyranny at our expense, then we can joke back. Here’s one:

Q. Was the TSA created by scientists or politicians?

A. Politicians. Scientists would have first tested it on monkeys.

Another one:

President Obama mentioned NASA in his State of the Union address. After the address, he called up NASA’s Space Center in Houston and said, “By the end of 2011, I order you to land men and women on the moon, Mars, Venus and the sun.”

NASA responded, “But, Mr. President, if we land on the sun, we’ll burn up.”

Obama shouted back, “Do you think we’re stupid here in the White House? Land during the night!”

Jan. 26, 2011

Fortunately, California is such a beautiful state that there’s no reason to leave anyway, except to get a job. So I’m staying put until the fascist TSA stops treating passengers like concentration camp inmates.

Here’s the latest:

If you don’t want to pass through an airport scanner that allows security agents to see an image of your naked body or to undergo the alternative, a thorough manual search, you may have to find another way to travel this holiday season.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport.

That person will have to remain on the premises to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. Anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest.

“Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process,” says Sari Koshetz, regional TSA spokesperson, based in Miami.

What a fascist. Once you’re in the clutches of the TSA goons, they won’t let you go. It’s the very definition of fascism.

And this from LewRockwell.com:

Ever since the initial discovery in the mid 1800s by the great doctor from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ignaz Semmelweis, health professionals have known that it is essential that the hands be washed between patients and after handling unsanitary items in order to minimize the transmission of disease.  With this in mind, all fliers should demand that the TSA agent change into fresh gloves prior to any contact.  The possibility for the transmission of various skin diseases and sexually transmitted diseases is increased exponentially with the enhanced patdown procedures, aka gropings.  Just think how many times the TSA agents use the same gloves for touching the outside of bags, the soles of shoes, as well as various and sundry unsanitary objects and surfaces, only to then use these same gloves to perform physical contact with intimate portions of fliers bodies.  Please advise all air travelers to protect themselves from the TSA and their disease-vector gloves.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the filthy TSA rubbed a plague across America, and the world, like the Bubonic Plague that wiped out up to 60% of Europe as recently as the 14th Century.

Nov. 20, 2010