Sunday, August 20, 2006

Airport Insecurity a personal perspective


As may be noted by lack of recent entries, I'm travelling. The timing of this has given me a chance to note airport securty, and lack thereof, in the wake of the recent so called foiled UK terror plot. My flights had several layovers and I left the airport each time to grab a smoke so I got to experience the checkpoints in each airport.

The first thing so obviously noticable in all of the airports I passed through, was the recently added restrictions on liquids and gels. Drink containers were barred passed the first security checkpoint, but available for purchase inside the terminals, then again barred from being brought on the planes. The result of this was that there were half filled drink containers literally everywhere in the airport. All waste baskets and disposal bins were full, plastic bottles littered any available flat surface and were left discarded in bathrooms, kiosk areas and pretty much everywhere the eye could see.

Perhaps it was a combination of some not getting the memo regarding liquids and those who did and were thereby urged by a fear of dehydration, but the effect was that drink sellers in the terminals did huge buisness and the airports were a veritable plastic container graveyard. If I was not already awake to the fact that the vast majority of so called terrorism is actually created by governments themselves in order to limit freedoms, curtail civil liberties and justify huge budget expenditures for their patrons in the military-industrial-security "machine", I would have been petrified by this whole plastic bottle fiasco for two reasons:

First, the sheer numbers of liquid containers around the airports alone would make it that much easier for anyone with ill intent to smuggle them through security. Like the protective camoflage of a school of fish, the odd item could have easily been lost in the big picture.

Second, and more alarmingly, should a dangerous substance have been in any of these containers, what better place than to have it right there in the midst of the throngs in the airport? It seems a far better target than a single plane.


All that aside, I found airport security in general to be quite lackidazical, which in itself was a bit astonishing considering that as I flew, the UK airports were still on high alert and the US ones were a step below. In one airport, the screener couldn't be bothered to glance up from her conversation with a co-worker to check ID's as she reached out and initialled the boarding passes of shoeless sheeple shuffling nervously through through rope-maze chutes to the metal detector. I found myself wondering how my nervous, dehydrated and fidgety fellow passengers would fare in the upcoming biometric scanner outfitted checkpoints of the future.

This was the point when I noticed how many people were carrying laptops and remembered a story I'd just read on dell and possibly other manufacturers recalling laptops because of a danger of the batteries catching fire or exploding and this even affecting 50,000 military laptops. Don't many cell phones, PDAs, Digital Cameras and a variety of other personal electronics also have lithium batteries?

Ah well, at least the flights were uneventful. My first one, I ended up in the no-recline seat, so without that extended two-inch comfort zone I decided to play "spot the air-marshal" to pass the time. Once upon a time, you could spot a fed by their Andy Sioiwicz style attire, however these days it's just as likely that the cute ultra-cool hipster girl is actually an agent. They're slow but they do learn. Thus a more subtle method is needed. I looked for anyone unusually alert whilst trying to appear distracted. This bore no fruit because there were a dozen lookie-loos casting furtive glances all around the cabin, undoubtedly reliving the phony movie United 93 in their minds. Interestingly, this alertness by passengers themselves was the only real effect I saw from the high alert status. Most of these enthusiasts concentrated their glances at some dark skinned gentlemen travelling togther, until at one point they started speaking spanish to eachother. The air-militia seemed to breath a collective sigh of relief. I found this both sad and funny and ended up giving up my game.

Once again pondering the carry-on restrictions I had to laugh. A quick glance around the cabin showed me an arsenel that only a McGyver fan could truly appreciate. Surely the fire extinguisher, defribulator and drink-cart full of flamable alcohol posed more threats than anything a person could carry on themselves.

Finally I amused myself by poking around the misconfigured blue-tooth and ad-hoc wifi connections left open by my fellow passengers, which killed some time but ended up being not so interesting, as such unsecured connections tend to be.

In conclusion I felt no more or less safe than I did when flying before 9/11 or when I flew shortly after 9/11. I believe my earlier surmise was correct. The new measures are nothing more than an attempt to limit freedom, promote security budgets and bump poll numbers.

Don't get me wrong, there is certainly a very real danger of terrorism. The catch is, it's not coming from who THEY want you to think it is. The real danger would lie in a government sponsored false flag terror attack. Think about it for a moment. It's simple economics. Who gains from terror attacks? Certainly not those being blamed for them. Can these people be so crafty yet also so ignorant that the consequences work against them? I don't think so. Further food for thought, I cannot even remember the last terror plot, foiled or not in which some key player did not have ties to the CIA, MI6 or Mossad. These agencies are the overt-covert faces of the true Axis of Evil and they have no lack of programable patsy martyrs to blame their actions on, we make more every day.

To protect yourself from false flag terror attacks, you need to ask yourself when the powers that be have the most to gain from one. Recently they've been content passing off phony Osama tapes and phony plot foilings, but the effectiveness of these tactics is becoming less and less. Even the talking heads are starting to sneer. As this fear mongering loses power, it becomes more likely that a large event will be used, so it is time to be wary. I've heard that Alex "Bullhorn" Jones is predicting a major false flag event sometime in mid October. I would say that would be pretty good timing if someone wanted to project more warmongers into power in November.

Keep Courage, Hope and Vigilance and we will win.

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