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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Carol Anne Gotbaum: Victim Of Death By Government These three things I know for sure: *I am not of Scandinavian ancestry. *There is no difference between "good" flan and "bad" flan.* *Carol Anne Gotbaum did not strangle herself with the handcuffs that were used to restrain her. Thus it follows that the Phoenix Police Department, which claimed that the tiny, 45-year-old mother of three small children somehow choked herself on the cuffs, is concealing the truth about what killed her. Mrs. Gotbaum, who was on mood stabilizing drugs (which she hadn't taken that morning), was detained at Phoenix's Sky Harbor Airport en route to a very expensive alcohol rehabilitation clinic in Tucson. Her family contact hadn't met her there, as he was supposed to, which didn't improve her mood. She had been singled out by the TSA groper squad for individualized molestation, which likewise helped to undermine her serenity. Carol Anne had reportedly attempted suicide in New York a year ago, which suggests that she was severely troubled and desperately seeking help. By the time the police arrived, Gotbaum was in the middle of a full-orbed breakdown. "They're not letting me on!" she exclaimed in a cellphone call to her husband Noah just before her arrest. "It's all falling apart." Noah called US Airways officials to plead on behalf of her wife: "It will be okay. She just needs to take her medication." It was clearly a medical crisis, not a security issue. But those running the Homeland Security State in which we've been sentenced to live insist on treating those situations identically. The last time an airline customer suffered a breakdown, he was gunned down by federal air marshals. After mild-mannered missionary Rigoberto Alpizar was murdered at the Miami Airport in November 2005, the air marshals insisted that the victim had made a bomb threat ... which was, you know, audible only to the specially trained air marshals, which is, like, you know, why the other passengers didn't hear it, and stuff. The truth is that Alpizar, who also suffered from a mood disorder, had a panic attack, which proved to be fatal because it prompted lethal panic on the part of people indoctrinated to see the public as the enemy. So perhaps it's a minor miracle that Mrs. Gotbaum survived long enough to be put into a detention cell at the airport, rather than being capped where she stood. Then again, it is possible -- I'd say likely -- that she suffered a lethal injury when the police (it's not clear how many) tackled her to the ground, one of them putting his knee into her back. Consider: Mrs. Gotbaum was a small-boned, petite woman of 45 who weighed less than 110 pounds. One eyewitness described the police assault on her as resembling a "football tackle," followed by the use of a knee in the back as a restraint. [Update: Newly released surveillance video shows Mrs. Gotbaum going to the floor while surrounded by four officers. The police spokesman narrating the film says that the officers "went to the ground" with her to protect her from injury. It looks like she sagged, rather than being forced to the floor, but it's difficult to tell for sure how she ended up lying prone on her stomach. What I find really peculiar is the idea that the best way to calm down a hysterical and obviously harmless woman is to have her surrounded by large armed men who seize her and attempt to handcuff her -- particularly when the specific source of her anxiety is the idea that she had been mistaken for a terrorist.] She was dragged away to a holding cell, where she was chained to a bench by a sixteen inch chain. She died about fifteen minutes later. Is it possible that the victim suffered a broken rib, or even a punctured lung? [Update: Although there is no audio available for the surveillance footage, the police narrator claims, on the basis of witness accounts, that Mrs. Gotbaum was "screaming at the top of her lungs" while being dragged away to detention. This is understandable. It also more or less shoots down my initial speculation about a punctured lung.] The question is purely speculative, of course. But it is much more plausible than the official police explanation, which emits the signature bouquet of bovine residue. Anybody who has had his or her hands cuffed behind the back (as someone who has been arrested in two countries and threatened with arrest in a third, I have had that experience) should understand that the feat of contortionism required for Mrs. Gotbaum to die in the fashion the police described was impossible. Well, unless she managed somehow to duplicate the experiment that turned Reed Richards into Mr. Fantastic. And the story gets even less plausible from there, beginning with the inconsistency in police descriptions of the death scene: Was the chain that supposedly strangled Mrs. Gotbaum wrapped "around" her throat, or "pressed" against it? The former might explain asphyxiation, the latter probably wouldn't, and both descriptions have been offered by the police. The "official" autopsy wasn't deferred, as the family had requested, until Dr. Cyril Wecht, the independent pathologist they had hired, could be on hand as an observer. The police refused to defer the "official" autopsy. Michael Manning, the family's attorney, was present at the official autopsy and reported seeing "numerous bruises all over her body." Dr. Michael Baden, a noted forensic pathologist, told the New York Daily News: "There were a number of things that were done wrong here. If she's asphyxiated, someone else did it." On the basis of what's known, Dr. Baden concludes, "the most likely cause of death has to do with asphyxia and could be a result of too much pressure on her chest when they were putting on the handcuffs and the shackles." [Second update: Manning, the Gotbaum family's attorney, has put into play the idea that someone may have used the chain on Carole Anne's handcuffs to strangle her. This is possibly nothing more than an attempt by a very aggressive lawyer to tune public opinion in advance of a lawsuit, perhaps as a means of extracting a very large settlement. But it may have the effect of pushing Phoenix authorities away from the entirely implausible story that she somehow strangled herself. Another possibility raised in this story is that Carole was killed by "compressional asphyxia" as a result of the knee to her back. But this doesn't really seem likely, since she was able to walk and put up some resistance as she was dragged away to the detention cell. That being said, it's possible that some serious and ultimately life-ending injury was sustained at the bottom of the police scrum.] She was shackled because, as I've pointed out elsewhere, for those enforcing the will of the Homeland Security State, the default setting is "overkill." Dr. Baden points out, correctly, that in Mrs. Gotbaum's mental state she should have been taken to a hospital, not a holding cell, and she should not be left alone. There was no security risk here. The heroes in blue could have handled an admittedly frantic 105-pound woman without forming a rugby scrum, grinding her face into the floor, and cuffing her hands behind her back. They did this because they're permitted to, not because it was necessary. So Carole Anne is dead, and her three small children are now motherless. Whatever proves to be the officially defined cause of Carol Anne Gotbaum's death, it happened because of the tactics used by the Homeland Security State -- the needlessly invasive and time-consuming TSA screening, the unjustified use of brutal force by the police, and the culpable ineptitude displayed by both agencies in dealing with what was obviously a medical crisis, not a security threat. This much we can know for sure. _______ *Lest I be accused of plagiarism, rather than understood to be offering an homage, I have to credit David Mamet for this line from my favorite political satire.
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#1. To: Ada (#0)
Why anyone flies is beyond me. I don't fly anymore, and never will again.
"He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative." - G.K. Chesterton
They have cameras everywhere except the "containment" cells...
After mild-mannered missionary Rigoberto Alpizar was murdered at the Miami Airport in November 2005, the air marshals insisted that the victim had made a bomb threat ... which was, you know, audible only to the specially trained air marshals, which is, like, you know, why the other passengers didn't hear it, and stuff. The truth is that Alpizar, who also suffered from a mood disorder, had a panic attack, which proved to be fatal because it prompted lethal panic on the part of people indoctrinated to see the public as the enemy. So perhaps it's a minor miracle that Mrs. Gotbaum survived long enough to be put into a detention cell at the airport, rather than being capped where she stood. Consider: Mrs. Gotbaum was a small-boned, petite woman of 45 who weighed less than 110 pounds. One eyewitness described the police assault on her as resembling a "football tackle," followed by the use of a knee in the back as a restraint. Both were murdered by jack-booted thugs who operate with the approval of Comrade Chertoff. Is a turnaround possible? If we wake up and smell the jackboot. Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today!
there is absolutely no excuse for the over reaction and physical treatment of this woman. she was clearly no threat to anyone. to have her die like this is criminal.
They killed her and her neck is missing. The ongoing cover up is going to die on the vine.
tell me where you saw that. someone told me that today - they removed her neck bones??? I haven't been able to find the story.
The family sent someone to the autopsy. For whatever reason, the neck, brain and heart weren't shared with this second party. I know the reason. I'd give you a link but try google.
"They didn't give us the complete body," complained Phoenix lawyer Michael Manning, who represents Gotbaum's husband, Noah. "They wouldn't give us the neck, the brain and the heart." Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today!
I saw the report on either CNN or MSNBC tonight. They had Dr. Henry Lee on, and he said the family had hired Dr. Cyril Wecht, and those body parts had been withheld.
Ron Paul for President - Join a Ron Paul Meetup group today!
oh, ok, whenever you get a minute thanks for the link Robin. so something on the neck bones must have been inconsistent with somehow wrapping handcuffs behind your back around your neck. not surprising
It is the classic cover up. Only this time it won't fly.
"They didn't give us the complete body," complained Phoenix lawyer Michael Manning, who represents Gotbaum's husband, Noah. "They wouldn't give us the neck, the brain and the heart." It's a criminal investigation, Noah. An autopsy is being done - drug tests and biopsies. But then you knew that Noah, didn't you? Btw, where were you, Noah, when your unstable wife Carol said she was planning to fly cross country to a drug rehab clinic. Were you too "busy" with "stuff", Noah, that you could not take a couple of days off to accompany your beloved wife to be sure she reached her destination safely? Croc tears for lawsuit purposes.
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