Writing Math Equations On A Plane Can Peg You As A Terrorist? Please.

Was it Menzio's equation or Muslim-like appearance that made a female passenger nervous?

Woe betide you if,  while on a  plane, you happen to be seated next to a clueless bimbo in flip flops who observes you trying to solve a  differential equation, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/07/introduction-to-partial-derivatives.html

If the bimbo's limited brain cells are unable to distinguish Arabic writing from math symbols you will likely be profiled as a "terrorist" and dragged off the plane for interrogation  - especially if you sport a darker complexion, curly black hair with beard, etc.  The tragedy is that not only was the poor prof in question victimized for minding his own business (but working out DEs while doing so) but so were dozens of others whose flight was delayed several hours. Such a fate befell an Italian economist  (Guido Menzio) whose AA flight was delayed after his seatmate -  described by The Washington Post as "a blonde, thirtyish woman in flip flops"  - saw him working on a differential equation and alerted the cabin crew. Can't have people working on cryptic differential equations now, can we?

Evidently, Ms. 'Barbie' Bimbo had never reached the level of even moderate math education to recognize an integral sign, far less a partial derivative and freaked out. Trembling, she scribbled a note of alarm and passed it to an American Airlines flight attendant who evidently didn't know any more about math symbols than the woman.

Thus, Guido Menzio, a University of Pennsylvania economist, was taken off and questioned by agents who did not identify themselves, after the woman - who initially reported she felt "ill" to Prof. Menzio (maybe in the head?) then tattled on his "strange script". . He showed his inquisitors what he had been writing and the flight eventually took off - more than two hours late. All that could have been spared if these geniuses had just checked his ID and googled his name. They'd have quickly learned that last year, he won the Carlo Alberto Medal for Best Italian Economist Under 40.

Prof.  Menzio told the Washington Post that the pilot seemed embarrassed.(As well he should have been realizing his plane had been carrying a nitwit unable to discriminate math from Arabic) The prof then wrote on Facebook that the experience was "unbelievable" and made him laugh. He was to board a connecting flight to Ontario, where he would give a talk at Queen’s University on a working paper he co-authored about menu costs and price dispersion (Q,S,s Pricing Rule). 

The University of Pennsylvania associate professor boarded the Philadelphia to Syracuse flight on Thursday on his way to Ontario, Canada. Before the flight took off, the woman sitting next to him passed a note to a member of the cabin crew. She initially told them she was feeling unwell but then voiced her suspicions about Mr.  Menzio's scribblings.

On learning this, Menzio wrote: "It's a bit funny. The lady just looked at me, looked at my writing of mysterious formulae, and concluded I was up to no good. It's a bit worrisome."

As well it should be, but if you read the terms of service before you board an airline - any airline - you will see how many rights you forfeit in this new fear and hyper-security era. These include freedom from not being fingered by a hysterical and ignorant seatmate who can't tell a differential equation from Arabic and then points you out to cabin crew as "suspicious". Especially if you lack a clearly defined white, "honkie" look and demeanor.

Most of the so-called "Contract of carriage" doesn't refer to dark, swarthy types writing strange formulas, but it does allow persons to be removed whose conduct has been known to he "disorderly, abusive, offensive, threatening, intimidating or violent"

Note that the terms "threatening and intimidating" can cover a lot of territory especially if one is an unread, nosy math knucklehead "intimidated" by advanced math. As explained by CBS Travel Editor Peter Greenberg this morning:

"They can kick you off for just about anything. You can be kicked off the plane if you're too fat, if you stare, if someone overhears you speaking a language they may not recognize. The operative word right now is fear."

In other words, it's a good damned thing back in May, 2013 wifey and I didn't practice our German before landing in Munich! Some moron that couldn't recognize it as a legit language may have reported it. All of which shows fear and ignorance rules in determining who can be kicked off a plane.

Menzio told Associated Press that the crew should have run additional checks before delaying take-off. He said, correctly:

 "Not seeking additional information after reports of 'suspicious activity' is going to create a lot of problems, especially as xenophobic attitudes may be emerging."

He also rightly blamed a lot of these "xenophobic" attitudes to the rise of Trumpism and especially the anti-Muslim component, which extends to many non-Muslims (like Italians) who might also be pegged as Muslims.

American Airlines, whose regional partner Air Wisconsin was operating the flight in question, said the crew followed protocol to take care of an ill passenger and then to investigate her allegations. It was established that they were not credible. But once again, the dislocation and inconvenience could have been minimized if someone at least had done a quick Google check of the man fingered by Missy Flip Flop.

Confirming this, in a FB post (later deleted) Menzio noted that the plane returned to the gate and the woman left her seat. He was then asked by the pilot to get off the plane, and when he did, he wrote that he was met by someone who looked like an FBI agent.

After first being asked about the woman sitting next to him, Menzio said, he was then told that the woman "thought I was a terrorist because I was writing strange things on a pad of paper." But there is little doubt it wasn't just the math but his appearance which, to this bimbo - probably caused her to think "Islamic terrorist!"

 Menzio on hearing the woman's tale then took the agents  back to the plane where he "showed them my math."

He told the Post in an article published Saturday that he is 40 years old, that he was wearing jeans and a red Lacoste sweater, and that the woman had tried to make small talk with him, but he was too busy with his math solutions.

He also told the Washington Post in an e-mail that "it is hard not to recognize in this incident, the ethos of (Donald) Trump’s voting base", in a reference to the presidential hopeful’s anti-Islam, anti-immigration rhetoric. (The Republican candidate has advocated banning Muslims from entering the US, building a border wall and deporting illegal immigrants.)

Truth be told things never should have come to this. The moral of the story? If you are seated next to a young blonde in flip flops who wants to start a conversation, be sure to oblige and not rebuff her. Then, be sure you at least explain the basics of any math you may be working on, so she realizes it's not Arabic and you're not a terr'ist.

Of 'White Flags' and the Subjugation of Government to a Corporate Order

Question: When is a white flag (actually a whitened American flag) hung atop a bridge (Brooklyn Bridge) a message by fed up citizens against the corporate -military spy state, and not the act of "terrorists", terrorist wannabes, or artists trying to generate an "art form"- as some in the dopey media insist?  

Well, when the medium used actually can constitute the basis of the message, as Marshall McLuhan first pointed out in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man.  In this case, the message of the bleached out American flag to the point of whiteness, or "surrender" - might well suggest to many of us that the flag raisers wanted us to think of the surrender and subjugation of our actual government to the corporate state and the marginalization of citizens (mostly to consumers) that has transpired since.

Chris Hedges again (Empire of Illusion, p. 166):

"Our government is being wrecked by corporations, which now get 40 percent of federal discretionary spending. More than 800,000 jobs once handled by federal employees have been outsourced to corporations, a move that has not only empowered our shadow corporate government but also helped destroy federal workforce unions."

Hmmmm.....shadow corporate government. But ....what if the 'shadow' becomes so powerful, say in controlling our representatives - either by lobby-campaign money or other  blandishments - that the citizen becomes "Weimar-ized" to use Hedges' term?  That is, useful only very briefly to put the bought out reps into office, after which the infusion of money trumps the votes and the corporate order reigns supreme. In this case the shadow government has de facto taken over the representative one, you know based on "consent of the governed" and it mutates into a nightmare or farce based on "consent of the corporate order".

Maybe, just maybe, that was the message the Brooklyn Bridge flag raisers were trying to send but most Americans, including officialdom,  are too dumb to get it. (Another aspect: the location - as one newser explained last night - is right amidst a bevy of local and federal gov't buildings.)

But we haven't gotten to the most toxic component of the corporate-security shadow matrix, which has extended its tentacles all over the planet.  True, it had existed prior to September 11th, 2001, but following that event it went far beyond any "war on terror". No, it merely exploited the 9/11 event and the pseudo-lingo "war on terror"  to give comprehensive doctrinal expression to an overbearing imperial policy. This came in an official document, “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” issued in September 2002. In the world, it stated, only one economic and political system remained “viable”: the American one of liberal democracy and free enterprise.


But as I already noted (previous post) free enterprise has nothing to do with democracy.

As I quoted Chris Hedges (op. cit., p. 185):

Democracy is not an outgrowth of free markets. Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities. Democracy...is based not on personal gain, but on self-sacrifice. A functioning democracy must often defy the economic interests of elites on behalf of citizens, but this is not happening.

But see, because the corrupt corporate shadow government, i.e. the "SYSTEM"  e.g.
 http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/america-haters-uhhno-system-haters.html

sold us this bill of goods, we've been looking the other way while it's metastasized. Grown to the extent of a malignant cancer. Indeed, in its formalized "doctrine" it makes no bones about asserting that it reserves the right to "henceforth promote and defend this system by the unilateral use of force — preemptively, if necessary." 

REALLY? Neoliberal, corporate governance is that crucial?  Imposing slave labor and indentured servitude to the corporations is THAT important to the nation's security? Evidently it is!

The United States  by its "Bush Doctrine" reserved the entire field of military force to itself, restricting other nations to humbler pursuits- like keeping their cell phones and computers open to NSA snoops.. In the imperious  words of the  National Security Strategy:  “Our forces will be strong enough to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military build-up in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States. If the United States is displeased with a regime, it reserved the right to overthrow it — to carry out “regime change.”

“In the world we have entered,” Bush Junior said, “the only path to safety is the path of action. And this nation will act.”


Indeed it will if the nation is entrapped in a ruthless corporate order- and is particularly hostage to the military -industrial complex which needs ever more money from the taxpayers to feed its insatiable maw. From this distorted frame of reference,  Bush's insane doctrine makes sense. Plus the fact that the Neoliberal-Neocon security state is dedicated to removing citizen security - and what better way than to bleed the coffers of government dry, via tax cuts and military spending?

Nothing fixes concepts and arguments better than a graphic, shown above. This ought to make mince meat out of former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' claim this morning that:  "disengaging from two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - is tricky - and may lead the world to perceive we are disengaging from the world".

Oh, I think not, sir!  I believe the world would instead exhale in a collective sigh of relief that a newly minted Empire (since 9./11) has finally removed its meddling paws from two places it had no business invading in the first place. But only used the pretext of "pre-emptive" war to try to establish Neoliberal democracies - which tactics we were already warned about in Amy Chua's 'World on Fire'.  As Chua observed,you have to be prepared to live with whatever the result of the democratic outcome - irrespective of how much you may despise it. And if a country's infrastructure won't support Neoliberal markets, well you better suck that up too!

I mean, seriously, does the U.S. REALLY need 702 military 'installations' in 63 foreign countries (it has 4,471 bases altogether), according to the Defense Department's  2012 budget statement? ( Figures that don't include bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.) We're talking about our military presence in nations like Germany, South Korea, and Japan. ALL of these represent redundant costs since the wars that incepted the bases are now more than a half century over! While the total cost of these bases is kept secret, the best analysis I've seen estimates their ten-year cost at approximately $1 trillion. (Some like hedges and Seymour Mehlman - quoted in his book -  put that cost closer to $3 trillion)

Chris Hedges again (p. 165):

"The defense industry is a virus. It destroys healthy economies. We produce sophisticated fighter jets while Boeing is unable to finish its new commercial plane on schedule and our automotive industry goes bankrupt. We sink money into research and development of weapons systems and starve renewable energy technologies to fight global warming....

The massive military spending, aided by a $3 trillion war, has a social cost. Our bridges and levees collapse. Our schools decay, our real manufacturing is done overseas, and our social safety net is taken away. And we are bombarded by the militarized language of power and strength.."

As for Mehlman, as Hedges notes (ibid.) he actually coined the term 'permanent war economy' to describe the American economy.  As he notes, "since the Second World War the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, present and current military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government".

The problem is that it's undermining and destroying the nation, leading us to a dangerous precipice. A large part of this is the funneling of desperately needed funds to military programs, and the other part is the mammoth corporate welfare defense contracts afford. As Hedges observes:

"Defense systems are usually sold before they are produced and military industries are permitted to charge the federal government for huge cost overruns. Huge profits are guaranteed."

The Pentagon, Mehlman notes, isn't restricted by the economic rules of producing goods, selling them for a profit, then using the profit for further investment and production. No, it can actually make profits off WASTE.  This may also be why, as former defense spending analyst Chuck Spinney noted in 2002, nearly $1.1 TRILLION still cannot be accounted for by the Pentagon. Consider just the bogus F-35 fighter which has had numerous cost overruns and still exhibits defects and problems that may never be solved. Yet, 2,335 of these white elephants have been ordered at a cost of a third of a billion each (cost still going up). WHY?

Because we think we have a blank check - mainly from the likes of China and other creditor nations - and that gives us license to go on doing this forever. But the jig will soon be up and most of the sad and sorry lot who pass for "citizens" today won't even see it coming.

Hedges again (pp. 187-88):

"The bullet to our head, inevitable if we do not radically alter course, will be sudden. We have been borrowing at the rate of $2 billion a day over the last ten years and at some point it has to stop. The moment China, the oil-rich states and other international investors stop buying U.S> Treasury bonds, the dollar will become junk. We will become Weimar Germany.

A furious and sustained backlash by a betrayed and angry populace, one unprepared intellectually and psychologically for collapse, will sweep aside the Democrats and most of the Republicans."

The proverbial "pitchforks" will then come home to roost.

At that stage, a single raised,  bleached-out American flag over the Brooklyn Bridge will be the least of our security worries.  For make no mistake that an insane policy of unchallengeable military domination over the earth,  wrought at enormous expense to a nation's citizens, and accompanied by a unilateral right to overthrow other governments by military force, is an imperial, Augustan policy destined to end badly. A policy redolent of ancient Rome - and we know what happened to Rome by way of its military overstretch.

Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, according to George Santayana. But is anyone paying attention?