Home, land, security. Great concept, but put together, it spells NSA, and it's nasty.

9/11.

Two planes on the twin towers, another on the Pentagon, and one crashing in a field in Pennsylvania. I'm sure we all remember where we were when the footage started coming out, and we probably watched those impacts in New York many times.

I remember a journalist saying on TV: "The world will never be the same again". I though at the time that he was exaggerating, but no, he was right. The world has not been the same since.

Now, I am not a conspiracy theorist, I believe it's very hard to conceal big things that involve lots of people for a long time (remember a secret is something you only share with one person at the time), and in this case, I am unconvinced, either way. I can't believe that a government would do this and get away with it, and at the same time I have reservations about the Pentagon plane, and am sort of not sure about the whole thing. Anyway, that's not really the point.

It happened, killed hundreds, and indeed the world has not been the same since.

There are few things that make me wonder however about the post - 9/11 era.

The first one is that I find it very coincidental that the moment the Berlin wall came down, we found ourselves a new enemy. Bloody commies didn't make it and raised the white flag, and bingo! Muslim fanatics pop up everywhere. There was no such thing prior to the late 90's, was there? Not in that structured, focused and dangerous way anyway (Ok, the PLO blew up a few planes, as did Gaddafi, but is wasn't really muslim fundamentalism, was it? It was local politics using violence to advertise their case as I recall). Mostly, anyway.

All of a sudden we have "Al Qaeda", a very sophisticated, well financed, global organization with a clear objective to impose a global caliphate, at least in the Middle East, but preferably world-wide.

Right.

What were these buggers doing when the wall was still up? And how come they only pop up their ugly heads after most of the wall was sold as souvenirs?

Secondly, after the Afghanistan invasion and the partial and temporary demise of the Taliban (nasty people, these, unless you like your women to be seriously obedient, don't drink, sing, dance or generally enjoy anything but beheading folks.....armed to the teeth by the Western world, I might add), some Texan schmock decides that Saddam is really a very bad guy, protects muslim fundamentalists (he never did, he quartered them), has weapons of mass destruction (anybody knows a weapon of no destruction? Oh, and he didn't by the way, which is what the UN said all along), and really, my dear, he is just a bad person, isn't he?

Now, North Korea has bad stuff - proven and tested. It has a very friendly little man as leader, right in the footsteps of his father and grand-father. OK, no muslims there, but still. No, he's ok, let's ship some fertilizers and stuff so these poor people don't starve.He's just a communist, they are not threatening are they?

Want a list of countries led by "bad" people (in the opinion of the Western world) and enjoy membership at the UNHCR, the commission for refugees, OHCHR, the commission for human rights, or other perfectly decent organizations?

Anyway, so Irak is invaded, the US makes a mess of it, and eventually leaves.

Meanwhile the "War on Terror" is launched. Homeland security is set up, new powers are granted to the "authorities" to "protect" the people (American people mostly that is, the others are just potential terrorists). Many countries follow suite. Too good an occasion to tighten the noose and get a grip on all those free thinkers that bother the smooth running of government.

Massive data basis' are set up, new detention powers granted, Guantanamo becomes the shame of the Western World, and... and we, the poor citizen of this world, we... get our mugs shot, fingers printed, passports changed to biometric, and then biometric mkII, our mails are collected and sometimes read, our phone conversations are listened to (ask Angela Merkel), and if you buy a rucksack AND a bottle of gas on the same day at the same shop, you risk the police raiding your house at dawn...

On a boat, we risk "hard boarding", i.e. armed people getting aboard never mind that your wife is naked in the shower (it happened to a catamaran in Trinidad not very long ago). We risk getting boarded by US coast guards in international waters, against all Maritime laws (also happened to some friends on a yacht not too far from Cuba (another dangerous place, that, hence the "embargo" without which, no doubt Cuba would invade the US).

 We are all very thankful of all the attention. Nice change...

I obviously take exception to all of this. If it did make any sense at all, I may actually go along with it (reluctantly)(not really)(no. I probably won't go along with this at any time). But anyway, the thing is it DOESN'T make sense..

At all.

Imagine you are Al Qaeda. You are a bunch of very smart, well financed fanatics, dedicated to destroy this evil Western society and set up the law of Allah.

Just imagine.

Would you go only for airplanes and airports? And the odd embassy?
Would you attack only the best defended parts of Western society?
You: sophisticated, smart and well financed?

Would you?

I know there were attacks on the London tube and a couple of buses, as well as the Madrid railway station*. But frankly, how well are bus stops, railway stations and the tube defended? The answer is NOT AT ALL. Yet for some reason the incidence of attacks on these targets is extremely rare.

Now imagine you are really smart, well financed, etc... Wouldn't you go for other things than just planes? Bridges, tunnels, shopping malls, undergrounds everywhere, whatever makes a big bang with little risk? Disrupting the western world in a really big way (can't go to work, searched before shopping, infrastructure blown up left right and center). Boy that would mess up our system...

I took the TGV (French rocket train) from Paris to Brussels a few years ago. No controls upon entering the railway station or boarding the train in Paris (I think they carry about 1500 people at close to 400 km/h). In Brussels, I was taking a plane to Heathrow. I showed my passport about 6 times before boarding the plane, went through multiple "security" checks - by the way, those "security" people are obviously the cream of humanity - and they love to ask sexy girls to take off their boots, particularly if they have a short skirt and don't you dare challenging them... but that's beside the point (Is it?) - and guess what: I had to go through security again upon LANDING in London!

How come I am not checked going to Brussels, or taking the subway in Brussels or Paris, or anywhere, but  I'm controlled so many times getting on a plane, or out of a plane for that matter? Will I blow up Heathrow, when I could have blown up the plane getting there? I probably would blow up the queue in Brussels, before the security check (there were hundreds of people waiting to be checked), as I mentioned to one of the security guys there (that was stupid, I was almost pulled out of the line for questioning, and probably would today)

Making a bomb is easy. Concealing it is easy. Sticking it in a shopping mall is easy.
Yet these Al Qaeda  imbeciles use some liquid stuff (hence the 100 ml allowed on the plane) or shoes sole explosives (hence taking off your shoes) to down planes, after going through various types of controls.
Man they are stupid! WHY PLANES?

Need I go on ? (and please don't tell me there are no attacks on the targets suggested above because our security apparatus is so efficient. Please!  Also, please don't tell me it's now the John Doe nut head that's attacking planes in the name of "Al Qaeda". If so, he/she is equally idiotic).

Conclusion, either:

1) Al Qaeda is really a bunch of pteromerhanophobics (look it up). They are afraid of planes, and just outright hate them. It's possible, and I could live with that, just like I can live with all sorts of phobic people. Many civil servants are one such group, they hate civilians who bother them while they are having their coffee (Know the joke about the civil service in Holland, where it is prohibited to look out of the window in the morning? Why? Because they would have nothing to do in the afternoon...). Ok I'm unfair.  So are they most of the time. Anyway, who am I to complain, they are the "authority" (I have a phobia about authority).

2) Al Qaeda is seriously stupid, in which case we are quite safe. They never thought of anything else but planes. So it should be easy to keep them in check. But then, why the "security" apparatus (snooping etc...)?

3) They don't exist (at least not as described, or at least not any more)? Convince me they do exist, please, I really need the reassurance. Until anyone does, I will continue to think this is just a story made up to keep us within the confines of Georges Orwell's 1984 logic (invent an enemy, focus people's energy on fighting that enemy).

Meanwhile our civil liberties are going, going, gone. This IS IMPORTANT. It's impossible to regain civil liberties except via revolutions, and these, folks, are painful, bloody, and rare.

But this is all for our own good, right? Meanwhile we don't bother too much with drug money, how it's used (we are talking billions here, enough to finance a US presidential campaign every year or buy a few countries every month), about the lack of transparency in politics generally, about what government debt really means, about how good/bad our leaders are, about how to keep population growth in check (remember my earlier blog?), or any other such topic that really matters.

We are officially safe.

In the middle ages, there was a guy going round the walled city at night, shouting: "All is quiet, sleep tight". This was the precursor of Homeland security. W improved it. Obama changed nothing. Why?

NSA, thank you for listening. You are my best public.

Next blog: Sharks and whales and dolphins and lionfish. Dangerous vs. cute species, and why Spielberg is a dangerous fellow, and why we are wasting energy on the wrong topics.

Comments, as usual, are most welcome.


  * I am not talking about bombs going off in many parts of the world on a regular basis. Doesn't impact the West, really, does it?

Sleep tight! Cheers.