Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Well Code Me Pink

This program seems to have been floated some time ago but I’m just getting around to being outraged by it.  The idea seems to be that we should rate and rank our citizens by how much of a risk they seem to be to blow up an airplane.  If our review of their credit history, employment history, and arrest record are sufficiently alarming, they will be grounded, prohibited entry onto a common carrier regardless of the fact that they’re carrying no weapons and pose no actual risk.  We’re using sloppy shortcuts instead of actual El Al style vigilance, and the victim is our civil rights. 

It reminds me of the fatuous blowhard who was expounding to a few tourists behind me in line for the screenings at the airport last year; he was opining that the TSA should use him to select people for secondary screenings, and not subject little children and old ladies to this indignity (and waste everyone elses’ time while they’re at it).  “I’ve never seen a Norwegian terrorist,” he chortled at his sheep-faced audience.  I turned to him and asked, “If you saw three middleeastern shopkeepers and Tim McVeigh, who would you pick to search?  I consider domestic terrorists as dangerous as foreign ones, myself.” He had nothing more to say on the subject for the remainder of our wait in line. 

Then we have stories like this.  That little bastard’s a code orange - good thing he’s got great credit or he’d have missed his flight…

Eternal vigilance is not working—nobody is listening.  Or nobody cares.

A conservative and very religious politician over here suggesed that Muslim women be banned from wearing chadors because they might hide exolosives in their garments. Cool, so, while we’re at it, let’s crack down on other suspiciously clothed people: I’m thinking nuns, clergymen, lawyers and academics. Not to mention conservative old men with bad toupees. You never know what they might hide under those…

it’s all just a big show.
the government wants to “prove” it has a great handle on the terrorist situation. they figure that if they don’t start using the more high tech, in-the-media, big brother techniques that are available to them in this information age (ie: instant credit checks and background checks) then they’re not doing an adequate job and, more embarrasingly, they look like fuddy-duddies.

also, to keep from looking even more archaic and red-tape-y, they feel they have to pander to our overwhelming “customer is always right” mentality and keep the security lines moving. they don’t want to get bitched at by folks just like fatuous blowhard because he didn’t feel like making it to the airport an extra hour early.

so they create this big show about how foolproof (yet speedy!) their new sysytem is and how great they are for being so on the ball with the profiling databases and whatnot. this helps them get to sleep at night, imagining that everyone is a perfect american who is unquestioningly patriotic and wishes no ill-will on the nation. it must only be foreigners who hate us. silly, silly foreigners… zzzzzzzz....

I’m tellin’ ya...New Zealand is looking better and better.

Oops I did it again! - Brittney Spears TGP thumbnail gallery we live together welivetogether little trouble maker joey jenna big naturals in the vip latina hardcore movies solo video girl