A particularly risible – even by Guardian standards – article by Richard Adams on the security theatre surrounding flying in the USA accuses those who object of being right wing and Tea Partyers – oh, and whingers. The byline to the piece covers pretty much what follows:
The pathetic whining over TSA airport security is a naked attempt to smuggle on board an unsafe rightwing ideology
So, those of us who recognise that this pantomime is a victory for the bogeymen and useless as far as genuine safety concerned, are smuggling an unsafe right wing ideology. That this is idiocy of the first water is obvious even to a passing glance.
Personally, I’d like to take a flight knowing that the plane is less likely to be blown up or hijacked and rammed into a building full of people. Alternatively, I’d like to be able to work in a tall building in New York City, Washington DC or even London without having a 747 flown into it.
Sigh… Intrusive surveillance of middle aged white guys in suits doesn’t make Adams safer and never will. After all, middle aged white guys in suits – or as one commenter below the line points out, Hispanic grannies – don’t have a history of packing bombs into their underpants or shoes. In general, they don’t go in for the suicide bombing thing at all, do they? So, fondling that middle aged white guy in a suit serves no real purpose at all. And doing so merely enables the whole fraidy cat were all cowering under the bed in case the bad guys get us war on terr bollocks, that people like Richard Adams in their arrant stupidity have swallowed whole. Frankly, anyone touched up by TSA staff has every right to feel affronted – and that affront is compounded by useful idiots such as Adams apologising for it all. Adams lives in the country of Benjamin Franklin but has failed to understand what he was saying. Because Adams wants to have a comfort blanket, his fellow travellers have to undergo unnecessary and humiliating intrusive searches. Adams will cheerfully trade liberty for a soupçon of perceived security.
Don’t want to be scanned in an airport security line? Really? Easy: don’t fly. Nobody is holding a gun to your head forcing you to take that flight to Aruba. Although if security is relaxed because of the idiotic uproar of recent days, then you might get a gun held to your head on-board the flight instead.
Of course. Never mind those who have no choice because of their work. Never mind that it is, in fact, a victory for those who wish to change our society by the use of terror, just don’t fly. They win. We lose. Next this twat will be arguing that if we have nothing to hide, we have nothing to fear, eh?
Because I like flying and I don’t like being on board a potential airborne torpedo, then I’m prepared in those circumstances to have my junk scanned or touched. I’ve been through both of those procedures at airports – as have many people. While I don’t enjoy it, really it’s so minor an issue that queueing for the security screening is a bigger inconvenience.
Yes, well, you might not mind it. Reasonable people do. It is an issue as it is not necessary, and does nothing to stop people who might decide to put a bomb onto a freight consignment. The terrorists have moved on from this as they are always one step ahead of the security theatre. They are laughing at Adams and the similarly feeble apologists for totalitarian behaviour, because they are doing their job for them. Who needs real bombs and bullets while you have willing cowards like Adams?
Krauthammer has the simple answer to this problem of white, middle class people’s junk being touched: racial profiling. And if you really think that makes America safer then that bridge in Brooklyn is still for sale.
And there you have it. So afraid are people like Adams of profiling that they will use any excuse – even treating all of us as suspects, when we all know who is strapping on bomb belts. A clue; it ain’t middle aged white guys in suits, it ain’t Hispanic grannies and it ain’t small children, is it?
I suggests that Adams puts his bid in for the Brooklyn Bridge, frankly.
This one seems to be all over t’ net at the moment LR.
I strongly suggest a trip over to http://www.grumpyoldsod.com. He has witten 2 recent pieces on airport security, one of them being about the way that the Isrealies do it without either delaying or sexually abusing passengers.
An interesting question to ask would be why the rest of the world doesn’t do it this way?
What a cowardly piece of trash. Here’s a quote:
“It’s bizarre that a nation that has largely rolled over and acquiesced in allowing its government to tap its phones and internet traffic – the Patriot act, a far graver assault on civil liberties – should get so exercised about this instead. Not everyone has, of course, and I exempt from that consistent libertarians such as my fellow Cif writer Jennifer Abel.”
Of course, all consistent libertarians have attacked the Patriot Act. They did so when it was brought in, and when it was renewed under Obama. They were always against it, they didn’t do a 180 degree turn when Obama was elected. The leftist establishment media described Rand Paul as ‘contrarian’ because, errr, he’s like err right-wing, but also against the Patriot Act. In other words, they can’t compute what a consistent libertarian is.
And see what a coward he is. He won’t even attack his fellow writer. ‘Oh no, Jennifer, I was having a go at the right-wingers, not you’.
Cowardly piece of trash just about sums him up.
I read the article on the Israeli solution. It is sensible, measured, pragmatic and it works. It makes eminent sense to anyone who has even the vaguest understanding of people – which, clearly, people like Adams do not.
Maybe the answer to why no one else does it, is perhaps, there’s no money to be made?
No money, and no wielding of power over others.
@ Maaarrghk
“An interesting question to ask would be why the rest of the world doesn’t do it this way?”
Well, the purpose for the Israelis was actually preventing attacks as they had a very high probability of attacks. On the other hand, countries with a low probability of attack wanted to LOOK like they were preventing attacks.
I think you hit the nail on the head Doc.
Something must be seen to be done.
As I said on the equivalent piece over on Anna’s: sooner or later the self-detonating brigade is going to target those queues of people waiting to go through the security circus. The carnage level will be about the same but the chaos resulting from shutting down an entire terminal will be greater.
And that’s another advantage of the Isreali system Clarissa.
It even covers the type of event that you describe.
No chance of anyone in Europe or North America adopting it then. 🙂
Well it’s a ridiculous article. As someone well to the left of the Labour Party, who opposed every attack on fundamental liberties perpetrated by Labour, of course I reject the notion that a respect for liberty is ‘right wing’. However I note that many of the right wing critics of Labour have suddenly become silent since the Coalition announced full-spectrum surveillance of our electronic communications by 2015. Not much surprise there, I’m afraid.
However the idea that ‘profiling’ is a solution to security really does need to be challenged. As has been said a thousand times, Islam is not a race and should profiling be introduced then terrorists will adapt their tactics to evade the profile. Had profiling existed a few years ago then the white anglo-saxon shoe bomber, Richard Reid, would have shaved his whiskers and worn a business suit and would have sailed right through security. The only profiling that might work would require a massive extension of the surveillance database state. Not something I’d have thought anyone here would want to see.
Profiling if done property is rather more intelligent than looking at race or folk wearing turbans. The Israeli solution is to profile behaviour. I do recommend reading the article about it.
The Israeli solution is to profile behaviour
Interesting. Unfortunately it would guarantee I would never get on a flight, as I hate flying and am convinced that the plane is going to explode. I am a bundle of nerves until I have sucked down at least three stiff Bacardi and Cokes on the flight. All I want to do before that is rip the head of the nearest toddler. This may be one reason why I not got on an aeroplane since February 1998. If my employer told me to fly I would tell him to fuck the closest convenient warthog.
You sound like my brother in law. He never flies. The reality is, though, it is a very safe mode of transport – certainly safer than the roads.
Under the Israeli system, you may find that you are subject to a closer look by the security people.
The reality is, though, it is a very safe mode of transport – certainly safer than the roads
Whatever. My safety is largely within my own control when I drive. As far as I am concerned, that makes it safer.
Under the Israeli system, you may find that you are subject to a closer look by the security people
Until someone justly takes them to the cleaners for unlawful discrimination against the nervous.