I remember a story one of the bodegueros in the Bronx once told me about a couple of Italian guys who showed up at his bodega, telling him in Itañol: "It would be a real shame if something happened to your bodega, we can make sure that doesn't happen."
It didn't exactly work out for the Italians, word got around they were playing Dominicans and one time when they came in to pick up their salaries, some guys inside distracted them long enough for the wheels on their car to get jacked. This was before cell phones, so they had to walk through the 'hood long enough to get jacked for not only their salaries, but also their shoes and guns. Word has it that when they came back to pick up their car with some new tires, it'd been burned down.
No one reported it... the Bronx was an amazingly silent place at times back in the 80s.
Nothing happened to the bodega; I guess the Italians decided that enough Dominicans had moved into the neighborhood that it was no longer their territory. And, in the same way that the mafia shakes down businesses by threatening to expose them to risks, so does the TSA currently shakedown millions of travelers in the US.
If you buy into the Transportation Security Agency protection racket, if you pay your pizzo -- your protection money to the TSA Precheck program -- you're guaranteed fast access and are not subjected to the dangers of untested technology. With the introduction of Full Body Scanners, the TSA may very well have irradiated millions of frequent flyers, not to say stored their naked outlines.
According to a report by the Inter-agency Committee on Radiation Safety: "Air passengers should be made aware
of the health risks of airport body screenings and governments
must explain any decision to expose the public to higher levels
of cancer-causing radiation... Pregnant women and children should not be subject to
scanning."
 |
| technologyreview |
Current millimeter wave scanners may be just as dangerous. A 2014 study carried out with the assistance of the US Air Force Research Laboratory examined previous investigations: "The data from these reports indicate that THz can exert a diverse range of effects at the organism, tissue, and cell level. It is reported that THz waves can directly impact the structure, functional activity, and dynamics of DNA and proteins."
The study verified those previous investigations, concluding that: "2.52 THz irradiation and BH may induce a significant change in the expression of many mRNA and miRNAs."
Furthermore, a study carried out by scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory found that:
 | |
| motorcitytimes |
"Resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA,
creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly
interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication."
So, are you a frequent flyer? Are you pregnant or lactating? Afraid of being seen naked? Do you prefer not to be a guinea pig in a massive irradiation experiment? Then buy TSA Precheck!
After all, your body is what's most important to you, you wouldn't want anything to happen to it, would you?
