{"id":47102,"date":"2019-07-06T07:30:50","date_gmt":"2019-07-06T12:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47102"},"modified":"2019-07-06T07:30:56","modified_gmt":"2019-07-06T12:30:56","slug":"us-is-a-classic-empire-and-is-becoming-a-repressive-police-state-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=47102","title":{"rendered":"US is a Classic Empire and Is Becoming a Repressive Police State at Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/2019\/07\/05\/us-is-a-classic-empire-and-is-becoming-a-repressive-police-state-at-home\/\">US is a Classic Empire and Is Becoming a Repressive Police State at Home<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As I set out to fly home from the UK on Monday following a short film project in Cambridge, I found my boarding pass, which I had been blocked from obtaining online the night before, carrying a bold-faced SSSS stamp in the lower right corner. Asking about it I was told by the British employee at the United check-in counter, \u201cThat is because you are on a US Department of Homeland Security list, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Later, after my son and I got the boarding gate, my name was called and I was ushered through a door in the wall behind the gate desk where two British security agents pawed through my bag and ran a cloth over computer, phone and all the zippers on my suitcase and computer bag looking for traces of explosives. After that I was politely told that I and my son (whose luggage was left uninspected) could board the plane. When I asked why I, a journalist with no criminal record, was being treated like a suspected terrorist, they laughed and said I would have to inquire of the DHS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s not the first time this has happened to me. The same thing happened when my wife and I flew to Vienna in March where she was playing a concert on Vienna State Radio. That time at a checkpoint between Heathrow\u2019s Terminal 5 and Terminal 2, my boarding pass was rejected, and when I got it reprinted a red stamp saying \u201cICE Security\u201d was added. As on Monday, I was subjected to a special search in a separate location near the gate by an apologetic British security officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US is a Classic Empire and Is Becoming a Repressive Police State at Home As I set out to fly home from the UK on Monday following a short film project in Cambridge, I found my boarding pass, which I had been blocked from obtaining online the night before, carrying a bold-faced SSSS stamp in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5493,26215,259,524,827],"class_list":["post-47102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-counterpunch","tag-david-lindorff","tag-empire","tag-militarism","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47102"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47103,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47102\/revisions\/47103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}