Our son decided to boycott the USA a few years ago because of absurd and arrogant "security" which nearly made him miss his flight.
Our daughter and 1 year old grandson DID miss a flight in May to Los Angeles because of "security" at Auckland airport. They had to go and get a new passport at the cost of a few $$ hundred [emergency issue price] and we had to drive up from Escondido the following day to collect them. We were planning on all traveling together to the USA.
Our grandson and daughter were not likely to be Islamic Jihad 747 hijackers or terrorists in the USA.
I consider the security people and processes quite stupid. Around the world, umpty million people take their shoes off because Richard Reid was trying to light his shoes but failed. Security was so dumb they didn't think of that until he did.
Security was so dumb during the 1990s, when I was sitting directly behind an open cockpit door, that I could have stood up, taken two steps and been in control of an aircraft roaring through the sky.
I considered mentioning it to the air crew as being an obviously dangerous situation, but didn't because aircrew are notoriously stupid and dangerous to passengers [with a hilarious film called Anger Management using the situation on aircraft]. I suspected I would be arrested as a dangerous alien making threats to an aircraft and held incommunicado for years in some cell.
So I didn't say anything.
Some Islamic Jihad people obviously had more intelligence than Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor who said nobody could imagine such a thing [I'm a registered genius too in that case, along with Richard Reid and his AlQ minders]. The result is history.
The main beneficiaries of the terrorist attacks have been the government bureaucrats and authoritarians around the world who are LOVING the situation. They can push people around, with everyone scared to say anything or they'll miss their flight or be given some rendition or at least held for days or weeks without any habeas corpus.
No longer do the stand around on street corners helping little old ladies find their way to Buckingham Palace Trooping the Colours. Now they are armed and get to shoot Brazilian blokes who look kinda Islamic. It's a LOT of fun to strut around being really important, bossing people around, getting big salaries, making great plans, introducing processes and laws and requirements and controls.
The main losers are the law-abiding trying to live their lives in the suffocatocracy. Step off your property, or even stay on it, and there are legions of bureaucrat bossy types waiting to tax and harass with reams of requirements. Most of what people do these days is to cope with government strictures and process.
What is hilarious, is that like turkeys voting for more Xmases and Thanksgivings, the electorates around the world vote for more and more of it.
I still go travelling, including to the USA. I have a lot of fun coming back through the processes in NZ, but mind my Ps and Qs in other countries since I'm a visitor and should be polite, and they are perfectly entitled to set any rules they like. But a TIA guy at LAX threatened to arrest me last time for being in a "secure area" and asking where I should go for security checks. It wasn't a secure area - it was just that I had walked over to ask him where to go.
I allow all day for getting back into NZ because I assume I'll probably be arrested or something.
"Thank goodness for terrorists!" That's the attitude of government bossy-britches. They are lovin' it.
Mqurice |
