Security Theater

If you were traveling this weekend I hope you made it to your destination safely. The overwheming likelihood is that you did.

I prefer mass transit fot the most part. It’s really not that big a deal to hop on Metro North or the T and slump in your seat reading a book or newspaper for a couple of hours. Subways aren’t that threatening (though people stand waaay too close to the edge of the platform and even if you don’t mind it please consider the agita you’re giving me, because I’m one of those altruistic idiots who’ll dive right after you and end up killing us both). Even busses are not that bad except the apparent randomness of their appearance and the frequent transfers make them more inconvenient and frustrating.

So that’s how you get around New York and Boston and why the heck would you want to go anyplace else?

Or you can drive which is a little more attention demanding (if you’re a driving texter you deserve your gruesome death which can’t come soon enough for Darwin) but is mostly relaxing and fun unless you set unrealistic deadlines. I consider anything within 2000 miles (3 days, 2 if you push) in range and that covers a whole lot of real estate.

And… that’s it. The end of the world.

I don’t like to fly but not for the reasons you might think. I’m pretty sure I’ve made my acrophobia clear. Heights make me uncomfortable, they don’t incapacitate me but they certainly suck the joy out of the situation. Here’s a true enough story- when I was Master of my Masonic Lodge I had to attend Grand Lodge as their representative. It was held in a multi-story hotel and after morning roll call you’d ditch and head up to the restaurant on the top floor. So I’m sitting next to the window but facing away and I put my hand on the glass which swings right out into nothingness.

Yeah…

They’d been window cleaning and forgot to latch it.

However this doesn’t apply to planes. 30,000 feet doesn’t bother me at all. What does get me about planes is how uncomfortable they are and how degrading and time wasting it is to get on them. I swear the next time I fly (which will be the last as I leave the United States forever) I’m wearing my hospital socks with the grippy rubber so I don’t have to take off my damn shoes. I already wear my sweats and a hoodie.

Sigh, I remember a time when it was jacket and tie.

Anyway this is all theater, deliberately designed simply to make us compliant and docile. None of it contributes one iota to “safety”.

Iraq PM orders removal of British-made fake bomb detectors
Martin Chulov, The Guardian
Monday 4 July 2016 13.35 EDT

For the past nine years, Iraq’s security forces have tried to stop car bombs with a British-made bomb detector wand that was long ago proven to be fake. A day after a car bomb killed at least 157 people in central Baghdad, the country’s prime minister, Haidar al-Abadi, has demanded their withdrawal.

After the single deadliest attack in Iraq this year, Abadi also ordered a renewed corruption investigation into the sale of the devices from 2007-10, which cost Iraq more than £53m and netted the Somerset businessman James McCormick enormous profits, as well as a 10-year jail sentence for fraud.
…
Their withdrawal follows years of insistence by interior ministry officials, who bought the wands at vastly inflated fees, that they were effective in sensing odours from explosive components.
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“This should have happened a long time ago,” said Sheikh Qadhim al-Sayyed, standing near the scorched remains of a shopping district in Karrada, just south of the Tigris River. “There isn’t a person in the country who thinks they work. No one here is responsible for what they do. It should be an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Corruption is the greatest threat we face.”

Nearby, three federal policemen stood in the shade. “They are fakes, fakes,” said one officer, Sayyed Hamza. “They have been laughing at us by making us use them.” While he welcomed Abadi’s announcement, he said, it was “past due”.

In a statement, the prime minister said: “All security forces must take away the handheld detectors from checkpoints and the (ministry of interior) must reopen the investigation for corruption in the contracts for these devices and follow all entities which participated in them.”