« More nanny attempts from the UN? | Main | Venturing out into new waters .... »
August 17, 2006
Airline chaos
As someone who does a fair amount of travel by air these days for business, I can only say that I am glad I have not had to do so in the last week or so. The chaos at our airports has achieved almost as much as blowing up ten or so airliners would have and has brought almost as much publicity. Score one for the terrorists. As if the chaos weren't enough, the forced removal of cabin baggage to the baggage holds and the insistence that passengers baggage may not be locked has increased theft from baggage exponentially and over twenty thousand pieces of baggage have gone "missing" from one airline alone!
While I appreciate that many electronic items can be rigged to act as triggers for bombs, there has to be a better way of screening this than to simply ban their carriage in the passenger compartment. Placing my laptop and my digital camera in the baggage hold in unlocked luggage is an invitation to some thief to help himself (or herself!) and the airlines are categoric that there will be no compensation for this loss - or for damage to either. The alternative isn't much better. Instead of taking my laptop I could take my Memory Sticks and m Portable Drive with me - but they aren't allowed in the passenger hand baggage either - so what happens if I lose them in transit? Well, then I'm stumped both ways, not only will I not have the use of a laptop at my destination - but I won't have my data files either! My camera is an essential tool of my trade - and being digital - I need my laptop to download it (even though I have a huge memory card in the camera) as I need to review the pictures I have taken to make sure they tell the story or illustrate the points I am trying to make. If this is stolen, as it appears many people are having happen, I am again up the Swanee in a leaking canoe without a paddle!
Best of all is the argument now between the Airports Authority, the Airlines and the Government as to who should pay compensation to the Airlines. Bugger the passengers whose holidays have been ruined or the businessmen inconvienced or suffering serious finiancial and business loss as a result.
What this has exposed is that we are simply not geared up to cope with this sort of threat at all. My last trip to the US was an eye-opener because at my destination, having collected my luggage I was forced to hand it in again and then stood in a queue for nearly three quarters of an hour to be screened for weapons, bombs and heaven knows what else before they would let me out of the airport! Surely, if I had a bomb in my baggage, I would have used it before we got there? Or am I simply being far too logical about this?
As a single man travelling sometimes to some dodgy destinations in the Far East I find myself regularly targeted by the security forces who search my baggage, question my motives for travelling and make suggestions of possible impropriety as being the reason for my trip. The fact that I am carrying HMG Id, loads of material which is all work related, travelling on tickets booked by my employer and to a destination I would probably not visit if I had freedom of choice, cuts no ice - single white males travelling to certain destinations fit a "profile" that our society is obsessed by - sex tourism. I resent very much being singled out in this way - particularly as the same lobby that insist that all single white males are child abusers screams blue murder if anyone even dares to suggest that young men of middle eastern origin are much more likely to fit the profile for a bomber than a sixty year old grandmother or a single white male in his middle age!
The real problem is international terrorism. It is not unique to the Muslim fundamentalist, although they are currently the number 1 users of this despicable form of warfare. It is a hangover from the Cold War, a war fought between the US and the USSR and their allies by proxy, in Africa, in Indo-China and the Middle East. It continues today, but now the terrorists are the men in suits ruling the countries they "liberated" (Mugabe is a good example!) and carrying on their "war" against "oppression" (defined as anything Western) in ever other country they can reach. The UK was fortunate in one sense during the IRA campaigns, in that we got a lot of experience of dealing with this
form of war, but all that has been lost in Blair's drive to "demilitarise" our society, downgrading the Fire Service and placing it in the hands of idiot civil servants and parachutists from Tesco and other "commercial" organisations. The police have had their powers curtailed and the courts are far to lenient because we have the lobby that screams "mistrial" if there is a single form not filled in to their liking.
And terrorism pays. Look around Africa, there is almost no government South of the Sahara run by someone who has not been a terrorist! Look at the Middle East, almost every government there sponsors terrorism somewhere else! Its how they retain power - keep the lunatics and psychopaths operating next door and keep them out of the "home" politics. OK, so the foot soldiers get to be "martyrs" but the leadership become rich and powerful and that is what it is all about. Power and money.
Messing people about at airports is a triumph for the terrorists. Chaos and headlines raise their game and encourage further attempts. The only way to beat it is to adopt the policy used by the Royal Navy against piracy in the Caribbean in the 17th and 18th Century. We catch you; we hang you! As long as terrorism brings recognition and reward for the likes of Hizbollah it will not be beaten. Those who take up the sword to murder civilians and attempt to seize power that is not theirs to take must be treated in the same way. Instant execution, cremation of the remains and the ashes dispersed where they can never become a place for pilgrimage or hero worship. Countries that sponsor groups like Hizbollah must also be punished, their assets frozen and their governments indicted with crimes against humanity.
Is it likely to happen soon/ Not likely, far to many of the current rich and powerful in every country including our own have a vested interest in maintaining the present status quo. That will only change when they are personally made to face the consequences of their inane and ineffectual approach to dealing with it.
In the meantime, the rest of us will have to suffer the consequences.
Posted by The Gray Monk at August 17, 2006 05:40 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://mt3.mu.nu/mt/mt-tb.cgi/4588