Steve,
I agree with everything you say about fascism. Yours not a rant. Just an exact description of what is happening.
But I am NOT clear why nudity is the bottom line. (};-]) We are absolutely passive until we find ourselves in the “showers” and are asked to take our clothes off? So, let’s imagine a scenario in which They say, “Ok. You’re correct! No Junkyard dogs at the TSA checkpoints. However, in compensation, we are going to have to start reading your mail, like the Israelis do.” (I don’t know if the Iraeli’s do, but that is what they are going to say.). Look, something is seriously amiss when Olberman and Beck agree on something.
Hey, TSA no problem. Time to worry about Obamacare’s recommendation of universal colonoscopies. (By the way, how do you copy a colonos, anyway?)
Nick
PS: As a test of my position, I went to www.aclu.org to see if they were on board with this hysteria. Ooops! They are! LOT of interesting stuff, there, none of which supports my position.
PPS: Did you hear or read the report that one can be exempt from BOTH procedures on religious grounds by claiming to be a muslim woman?
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2010 4:00 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] TSA, security technology, and opting out
Nick -
Nah, Steve. I am going to rain on this parade. Sorry.
I wondered what that splashing/drizzling was all about! Thanks a lot!
For years we all had our inseams measured without accusing tailors of homophilia. There is nothing inherently undignified in the search except that perception makes it so.
So, my barber who keeps dropping his comb into my lap *isn't* making a pass at me? Shoots, I'll be needing to find another barber I guess! And you might not be surprised, but I've never had a tailor handle my junk while measuring my inseams... but then, that salesgirl at the store where I buy my jeans is welcome to measure my inseams... but every time I ask, she declines the opportunity.
All of this “keep your mitts off my junk” (“JUNK!” WHERE THE HELL DID THAT COME FROM?) is a juvenile distraction from two EXTREMELY important issues.
Are the back scatter scanners safe?
Is security based on high cost machinery (rather than intelligence) effective.
It does give me pause that Michael Chertoff was, I understand, a serious investor in the company that makes the machines. No I don’t have any proof.
I don't suppose I disagree that these are potentially important issues. But I don't agree that submitting to escalating levels of invasive and highly questionable measures based on induced hysteria is a "good and necessary thing".
I'm still of the strong belief that one of the errant memes amok in our culture is the meme of fascism. The meme that insists that the good of the whole is entirely dependent on and subservient to the whim of the bureaucracy in place (and expanding). It is my firmly held opinion that the majority of the response to 9/11 has been an opportunistic one, feeding those who would feed this particular meme. Fascism positively loves fear!
I'm also completely in tune with the theme.... "just because you are paranoid, doesn't mean they are *not* out to get you". Yes, the great and wonderful America the Beautiful has ENEMIES and they "Hate our Freedoms" (What?) and they *will* hijack our planes and fly them into our tallest buildings if given the chance...
But I contend that there is also a rot within the souls of our own people who "Hate our Freedoms" in an entirely different way. They hate our freedom from fear, from administrative picayune control of everything. Just go dump your wallet out on the table and look through *that junk* and tell me that you are not being harried by a dozen or more trivial systems which require you to step and fetch... driver's license (aka Universal ID), Insurance card(s), credit cards, Social Security Card, Loyalty Shopping Cards... the rest I'm not sure I wanna know! Then go check the file cabinet, and the glove box of your car... or your stack of unopened (my case) or recently opened (more likely) mail. The quantity and complexity of the systems designed around keeping YOU in line is amazing. Dial up a right wing talk radio station and listen to the rhetoric in the *advertising* on identity theft (guard), it is positively disgusting!
Yes, someone hates our freedoms, but I don't think it is the 12 year old boys and girls spread across a great deal of the world strapping bombs onto their chests to blow up our tanks (those not busy stepping on our errant landmines)... *they* have something seriously sad going on in *their* (short and likely miserable) lives as do our young men and women stuck in the "stop-loss" war that is consuming their prime years, but the threat is as much from within (all forms of paranoid hysteria and the fascist systems and behaviour it can fuel) as from without.
Ooops, I think I got off on a rant there! <grin>
- Steve
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