h/t to Lawrence England for this video, it is by one of those American Fundamentalist groups but it does highlight one area of diminishing civil liberties issues.
As my friend Ted who was something high up in the CIA said, "Governments need to control more and more when society fragments through a loss of commonly coherent moral and spiritual values."
What was it the Great Charter says about freedom?
7 comments:
I have to say I have a very unconventional take on airline security. If it was up to me I'd let passengers bring on guns and knives when flying. Like in the 5os and 60s where if anyone was packing no one was the wiser. Did we hear about hijack then? NO!
As for planting chips in people, it can have its uses...in VERY limited circumstances. A friend of mine's b-i-l who works for the US state department as a career foreign service officer has recently volunteered to serve for a year in Iraq overseeing rebuilding process in one of the provinces there. He will have very little personal protection outside of 3rd party contractors. A very high risk job, and something like this might give his family some small peace of mind. HOWEVER, as can be guessed this stuff is not cheap - and it's more than obvious that companies who develop such technology want to spread it far and wide to both recoup costs of R?&D and obviously to make a huge profit. They are fear mongering. Do kids get kidnapped? Do people start bar brawls? Yes. But living in fear is no way to live one's life on a daily basis, especially for the average person. Life doesn't hold any guarantee that bad things won't happen to good people. But this sort of thing (especially if forced on children) etc. only forces a paranoia that "the stranger is always bad" and kills common place social interaction of communities. People unnatural FEAR the other by default and reflex instead of being taught by parents and elders when it is reasonable to "take flight." For generations parents warned kids "not to go in cars with strangers who offer you candy or look for a puppy." And that's good and reasonable. But this "don't say hello back to the 80 year old grandmother because she's a stranger" is insanity.
Gem, I have to say I agree with you about letting people bring whatever weapons they like onto aircraft. Nobody would get on one. They are an environmental disaster from every point of view imaginable. Then we would all have to travel by ship or train. Which means that ferry services which have long since closed down would reopen as passengers changed their habits. Cheap long-distance travel would be no more. Ruinous developments in remote places would stand unwanted and go back to nature.
Ah, but Henry, my point was people could and perhaps DID carry guns, knives and all manner of things on airplanes then. My dad's B-i-L lost a couple of pocket knives to airline regs. Simply because he comes from a generation where virtually ALL men and boys carried a pocket knife. And he "forgot" that the idiots who are supposed to "protect" us but let anyone wearing a sheet on the tarmac are supposed to take care of security...which is shaky at best. A really determined terrorist will do whatever they want - none of the rest of us have a fighting chance unless they resolve as a body to jump on the first ***hole who tries something a la the Richard Reeves incident.
But back when these punks DIDN'T know who was packing they didn't have such easy pigeons to hit.
Gem, anyone who fires a gun inside a pressurised aircraft cabin is liable to bring the aircraft down. I think enough people are aware of that and if your proposal were to be put into action, it would effectively put an end to commercial passenger air services. And a good thing too say I.
:-D how come the air marshals pack heat?
Besides, Henry, I suspect the most common use for a gun on a plane would be to directly menace the little urchins behind you who won't stop kicking your seat for hours. Their parents would straighten up and fly right too.
What does "pack heat" mean? I thought this was meant to be an English language discussion group. You need to translate.
Do US parents, like British ones, have a particular difficulty in disciplining their children?
Children here in Europe generally behave in a civilised way. They do not misbehave on public transport. The problem you are talking about seems to be mostly in the Anglo-Saxon countries.
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