Peacenik Right to Travel by Air Denied in USA

the gpusa member was denied access to the plane because of refusal to comply with new weapons policy at airports around the country. i find it amusing that some of these supposed indie/counterspin/ articles offer a biased point of view. isnt that just as bad as THEM(TM)? you would think people here would be interested in unbiased, pragmatic articles instead of bullshit leftist propaganda.

Alright "Justin H" -- where are YOUR references? Where did you get YOUR "inside information"??? come on, come on, and all the shit you said back at you.

go here or something : http://www.bangornews.com/editorialnews/article.html?ID=44958

she was refused on the plane. that is fact. she was denied boarding of the plane, NOT because she is a pacifist but because she was uncooperative. Thats good, what if she was islamic or black or something, then you'd all be pissy about racial profiling and whatnot. its good to see that they are being just by not simply focusing their antiterrorism security measures at suspected racial/gender/blah/stereotypical terrorists but also being extra cautious of upper class white bitches too.

I first heard about this incident on global indymedia yesterday.

Today I came across some person online (various aliases, such as "Starlene Rankin") who is going to all the indymedia sites and trying to call Nancy Oden a liar, and pointing to an article in the Bangor Daily News http://www.bangornews.com/editorialnews/article.html?ID=44958 which could be interpreted so as to discredit Nancy Oden's story. Since I gather that this rebuttal story is being taken seriously, I decided to call Nancy Oden on the phone to question her about it directly. After doing so, I believe what she says, that no, she did not "make a big fuss" at the airport and get kicked out because of that.

Apparently there are factions involved, different green groups and people with grudges (jeez, can't we get past this stuff? aren't we in enough of a crisis? is this COINTELPRO?). Anyway, the group Nancy Oden is in includes Mitchel Cohen, and that goes a long way with me, as I am a fan of his.

The National Guardsmen and other sources that the reporter for the Bangor News used besides Nancy Oden were "not completely frank" (big surprise). She was NOT uncooperative. As she pointed out, not cooperating is a crime, and they would have arrested her, which they did not do.

She helped them open her bags and she cooperated with the wand-check. She did not resist these reasonable measures.

What she did resist was being grabbed by the arm by a young National Guardsman who started yelling in her face about "Do you know what happened on Sept. 11?" At which she wrenched her arm away and said "Don't touch me, I will not stand here and listen to a lecture by you about" (...something like bombing innocents, I don't remember exactly what she told me, but it probably was not the subservient approach that might soothe someone with this type of fascistic mentality). She said, "then he came at me again, and I said 'DON'T touch me'.

She said she was surrounded by 6 NG with machine guns.

I asked her about this part of the Bangor News article:
"She was uncooperative during the screening process,” said American Eagle spokesman Kurt Iverson, who added that Oden reportedly would not stand still when security staff tried to wave a metal-detecting wand over her. "

She said she has no idea who this American Eagle spokesperson is, and that she did stand still for the wand. Even though this was right after she had been grabbed and yelled at, she stood still. She did say "don't touch me with that" when the guardsman was holding the wand right up next to her breasts (he did subsequently touch her shoulder with it, but she kept quiet). The guy was literally three inches from her face, and she stepped back. This is the extent of any "not standing still" or non-cooperation that happened.

She said they may have wanted to arrest her, but there were enough people standing around who had witnessed what happened.

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I also found this just now:

http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=83220&group=webcast
Bangor Daily News used locally to wrap fish (english)
by DR 8:00pm Sat Nov 3 '01

Having grown up in Bangor and Orono, having spent years there as a radical political activist during the 1960's and 1970's, I can say with absolute certainity that the Bangor Daily News has virtually no credibilty as an accurate or objective source of news. The poster who suggested that the paper consistently mirrors the politics and bias of the local corporate elite is right. That rag has a well deserved reputation for being historically rightwing, anti-labor, anti-green mouthpiece for those in power, remains an ardent advocate of unrestricted gentrifcation and a fierce opponent of local oppositional politics. Take a stroll through their editiorial section online. Then take a gander at their archive at the University of Maine at Orono, look at the coverage of Viet Nam, US intervention in Central America, the Gulf War ect.

Looking at both points, It just doesn't make sense that Ogden would be flagged as a 'potential terrorist'. How come this has happened to noone else?