Make up to die for?

I’ve been home for a while now, but before I could fly home I had to get through LAX security first-very lax. Travelling during the ‘orange’ level just made the security staff twitchy. And don't get me started on the Bush administration's threat level.

The following is an extract from a live ‘flog’ I did in the airport on my phone which I subsequently added to:

It’s orange today and was red yesterday. It’s like a weather forecast for imagined disaster.

They have army personnel lining up with gloves searching our bags. It's quite a sight. I originally thought they were going on our flight, rather excessive intimidation I thought.
I tried taking a photo of the process and got quite a few (see my Photoblog for the best…)
I was stopped by a man in a suit who informed me I couldn't take photos.

‘Why’ I asked politely, ‘just out of interest’ and all.

‘Because you are showing them how we do businesses’ He said.

‘Exactly’ I thought to myself but knew better than to argue with a man who was most likely from the CIA and held my proverbial ticket home in his hand. Though, I now was a witness to the business of intimidation through security.

‘Always remember who is benefiting’ said Hunter S Thompson once.

Business.

It’s like the old Dickensian question, who wins the court case…..it’s always the lawyers!

It is very similar in an environment of fear. Who benefits? Those selling and supplying private security and the governments quietly introducing ‘security taxes’ and stock markets and other baffling economic thingamajigs I’ll never understand.

The comment the guy made about showing how it’s done…like somehow ‘they’ wouldn't know how to search a bag.
It was a real ‘us’ versus ‘them’ mentality. Like it is a war….on terror.
Well, the only terrorising I have had is from the security forces and the media. I like to think Mi5 and CIA and all that are genuinely warning us about things and preventing etc….I’m sure they are….but a little part of me questions the Public Relations aspect of it all.

The flaw in the war on terror is difficult to articulate. How can it be a war on terror? Terror is an induced state of mind. Does this mean anyone who claims to be a terrorist is covered by the Geneva Convention as they have had war declared on them? Or is the war against our own fears, promising to stamp them out. It certainly is not this, for who can say they are relaxed on the tube even before the 7-7-05 attacks? This is a war like no other in our modern age, fought on ideals like WW2, but against an enemy which is largely a creation of our subconscious and existing in it too. It is the McCarthy witch-hunt of our age and yet somehow much more sinister. It is against people who not only make us question our lives and systems; they claim WE are the infidels. How dare they? We have plenty of morals, as long as they don’t disturb the economy TOO much. I believe the soldiers at the airport served an interesting Orwellian dual purpose. They served not only to perpetuate our terror (acting more as a visible flexing of power than anything practical) but also as our protectors. The enemy is largely imaginary. How do you have combat with an imaginary enemy?

You dress up people in combat gear in airports to and look for it in people’s bags, searching through lipsticks and makeup, where it might just be hiding.

I have been typing this into my phone for a while now. Three people in ‘Men in Black’ style suits are now talking to each other while looking at me. Hannah is staring them out while I write this in my phone.

They probably think I’m a spy now. I'm about to get probed, I can feel it coming.

It’s an interesting experience seeing this process. It is a real display.
I may get to feel it soon as well as see it….

My Opinion on Personal Freedom Vs Personal Safety


There is no way to stop people dying…on a long enough timescale the survival rate is zero someone once said. Bear this in mind.

There today seems to be a similar acceptance of terrorism. The idea it is an unpreventable inevitability, vaguely predicted by ministers with sniffs of intelligence which have been guffed down their phone lines.

There is no way to prevent terrorism.

From the perspectives of Governments, organised terrorism is in some ways easier to detect and use to frame people.
But what's happened to the individual Nutter we used to hear so much about, especially from the USA?
The guy that god told to do it (who didn’t have a turban or is not called Bush) or the people who had voices in their heads (same sort of thing really…)
It can't be long until one crazy person acts alone and unexpectedly.

We see it with guns, knives and even with doctors.

Be it a planned, gradual and slow slide into the areas of thought which justify the random killing of others or a blinding flash or irritation which causes a reflex of horrific violence.

So really there is no way to ever be water tight. How ever many civil liberties are stripped, sliced and trimmed. Yes, organised terrorism is a more persistent and efficient means of guiding people into thoughts which justify the killing of others but it is not random. It is just a group of like-minded people who feel, for whatever reason, that violence is their only means of effective resistance. Be it Guy Fawkes, Gerry Adams, Bush or Osama.

But on top of this there will always be the freaks.

I'm not saying the billions of pounds spent on surveillance are wasted, but people should just remember that they are the trawler nets of society, to fish out the obvious problems. However there is no such thing as a perfect system. Thank goodness.
Nothing should have an unchecked power.
Even those powers which can save lives.
Sometimes it is necessary to draw a line and say; well if I die I die.
Civil liberties are more important than life or death.
These are the things that make life worth living and what we are all fighting for in some way or other.
Be it from behind a desk in MI5 or a cave in Pakistan. We all try to guard what we have. The rights of Our lives are too precious not to protect.