I don't know about the UK, but in the US the current policy is to promote fear. This helps keep the current party in office, allows spending of money for "security" with a minimum of oversight and justifies suppressing civil liberties.

What is the purpose of preventing people (who are obviously not "terrorists") from carrying benign items onto a plane - especially after they have been inspected? To prevent an inflight attack? Of course not. It is to re-enforce the thought that everyone should be very afraid and let big brother take care of protecting you.

Why weren't the airline security people aware of a liquid explosive threat before the arrests? Where were the plans to forestall such an attack? Why was it necessary to suddenly put an ad hoc plan into effect? Why was in necessary to panic everyone and ground planes all over the UK when there was no attack expected?

Do the police even talk to the airline security departments in the US and the UK?

What answers all these questions with the least amount of difficulty? Fearmongering.


Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape

I've been think about this a lot since the latest drama. Most every thing one does involves some risk. When I walk out my door to go to the grocery store I am less safe than I would be staying at home. There are reasonable precautions I take such as looking both ways before crossing the street. There exist the possibility that I could get caught in the crossfire of a robery at the store. I don't spend much time worrying about that. However, I am not going to subject myself to the risk of going from a stroll in a rough part of town at 2:00 AM. As long as things appear to be reasonablly predictable my level of anxiety is not a great burden. If there were a sudden rash of robberies in my neighborhood it would be and I would probably be among those demanding that the police do something about it.

The big issue with the issue of "international terrorism" is not having a great deal of information about what is really going on and not being entirely confident about the validity of the information that we are getting. I am not particularly optomistic of much improvement in the situation. All governments that are faced with this particualr problem seem to have their shoe laces tied together when dealing with it.

Our believe that our technology and distance keep us safe.

Technology can help, obviously, but distance is meaningless in this day and age.  Bush always says, "Before 9/11, we believed that the oceans would protect us."  Who believed that?  Anyone old enough to remember Pearl Harbor surely cannot believe that, nor can anyone who knows of the event.  No one has believed that since, as Bill Maher put it, "we invented ships and flying machines, Mr. President."  If distance guaranteed protection, America would be a nation of Indian casinos.

We had attacks from new arrivals of the anarchist persuasion here in the states in the early-20th Century.  Why should al-Qaeda's ability to attack have come as a shock to us?  They've been attacking us since Reagan's pullout from Beirut.  They attacked the trade center twice.  They've now apparently tried to destroy aircrafts over those "protective" oceans twice with liquid explosives.  If we didn't see this coming, we're in more trouble than I had imagined.

The response to 9/11 should have been to:

(1) Attack al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan,
(2) capture or kill the leadership,
(3) increase security here at home,
(4) get the hell out of the region after stopping the bad guys, and, finally,
(5) begin a massive transition away from energy sources that cause global warming, particularly, of course, oil.

That's all.  None of this nonsense about "remaking the Middle East".  In the end, the people of the Middle East will need to do that for themselves.  We can pressure brutal regimes in varous ways, but it's not our war to fight, to be quite honest.

So I'm in agreement with the Telegraph that our policy should've been less interventionist.  As everyone here knows, I probably qualify as an isolationist.  My view is one that says we should rid ourselves of oil, and, then, tell the governments of the Middle East, if you'll permit my stealing a line from Cheney, to go fuck themselves.  Let's see how great life is when they don't have the West around to buy their oil and, instead, have to figure out how to actually produce something of value beyond beachfront condos for retired Brits.  Suddenly the "infidels" would no longer have to put up with their crazy religious bullshit.  Suddenly the Middle East is just a useless pile of dirt populated by whackos.  Suddenly radical Muslims have nothing to bitch about.

"Oh, now you need us?  Sorry.  Wish we could help, but we're very busy improving our lot already."

Oh, and suddenly Chinese contracts with Iran don't mean anything.  Who are the Chinese going to sell their crap to if the West decides it doesn't want to trade with polluters and brutal regimes anymore?  "Oops."

I, for one, would love that.  I can hardly contain myself while thinking of it right now.  If only people would listen.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Government cannot keep us absolutely safe, it can only make reasonable efforts to do so. Before we authorise our Govts to render our everyday life as we know it unliveable with impositions of security that make ideas of freedom, liberty and self-determination meaningless we need to engage in a debate about our realistic expectations.

I, for one, agree with you. However, the idea of limits on impositions to (what we have for the last couple of hundred years considered) our liberty may be a tough sell. I have heard within the past week several people say that they would easily put up with even more disruption to air travel in order to increase their safety. These were comments by people returning from business flights, who depend on airplane trips for their work and who were directly caught up in this latest situation.

In the 1930s Europe had pretty extensive border controls. There is absolutely no technical reason why every state, or county, or township in the U.S. couldn't put up roadblocks to control the flow of traffic. It would not be hard at all--California already has the checkpoints set up for the purpose of agricultural inspections. And it would be welcomed by many.

My view is that our expectations of daily safety have risen. If you look at life 100 years ago, there were people on sailing ships working in the rigging without safety belts, miners without hard hats or breathing apparatus, railroad brakemen working on the tops of box cars in mountain blizzards, people riding horses (which is quite dangerous), unregulated food supplies, poor understanding of drugs, and no antibiotics. In that sort of environment one can handle a "terrorist" threat by simply adding the resulting death toll to the background death rate. But today, particularly given the potential scale of a terrorist project, the risk is considered by many (most, I would guess) too high to ignore.

I expect that travel restrictions will get worse, not better. There is no practical reason, for example, to not have controls on tube passengers. You already have to put a ticket through a turnstile; why not use your internal passport and have your photograph recorded at the same time? (As if that's not already happening in London anyway...)

Terror is not the point here. It's very obvious in the US that the Dept of Pointless Obscurity has done nothing at all to prevent terrorism. There's a lot of Insecurity Theatre, with people being asked to take their shoes off during check-in, but I'm sure any real terrorist organisation would have no trouble putting a bomb on a plane in the hold or importing a heat-seeking missile via the rather loose customs policies in place at the UK's more upmarket docks and marinas.

Meanwhile the UK is pushing a clear and obvious surveillance and monitoring agenda. The goal seems to be almost total surveillance of everything people do outside of their homes, and quite a bit of what they do inside it. Terror alerts seem to be fitting in with these plans very neatly.

The conclusion is either that Blair is too dim to understand that Iraq and Lebanon are creating terrorism, or that he's in for the money and the show, and is quite happy to see things get worse, with increasingly intrusive indignities heaped upon the population as the threat (allegedly) escalates.

Why he would want that, I have no idea. I don't like any of the speculations I can come up with, especially the ones that rely on Blair's new-found religious fervour. Unfortunately the possibility that Tony has twisted the childproof cap off the KoolAid and is now a closet fundy seems all too real, especially given the company he's been keeping.

But whatever the reason, increased surveillance is central to government policy now - apparently, more so than terrorism itself is, which in real-world terms is running far short of anything we had in the UK in the 70s and 80s.

If total surveillance wasn't necessary then, why is it necessary now?

What makes you think they want to defeat it?

Ok, I know it was repeated over and over up thread.  But honestly.  This is all about ensuring terror, contrary to everything you see on tv.

Are there real terrorists out there who want to bomb our planes?  Probably.  There are few scenarios which we are capable of ruling out altogether.

But terror is the iron fist with which they rule us.  

Back in the olden days, when attacks were foiled, governments kept the whole deal hush hush.   Or simply went about the calm serious business of prosecuting criminals.  The last thing they wanted was mass hysteria ensuing.  Now they WANT this hysteria.

This is sooooo not about protecting ourselves from Islamofascists.  

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -Voltaire

Sigh.  Everything is a conspiracy.  I just miss those good ole days when an airport security inspector almost anywhere except GB would wink when he or she saw the Swiss Army knife and pepper spray in my carry on bag, or even a load of neatly wrapped swords and daggers from Khartoum.  Terror sure isn't what it used to be when it mostly occurred outside the US and only involved the murders of just a few Western tourists, diplomats, aid workers, and faceless, nameless military men and women, and of course more than a few expendable third worlders.

I can swear there ain't no heaven but I pray there ain't no hell. _ Blood Sweat & Tears

... I agree with the Telegraph. That means the End Times are coming. Repent ye now!

Great diary, Helen.

Maybe, if I'm generous, I could admit that is a function of being in charge that they feel a sense of responsibility to us. That they would do anything to ensure that we are kept safe lest their pact be broken.

If I may be cynical, let's make that "... lest they be out of a job."

(I see more police in this country than anywhere else I've been. This makes me feel less safe. Even in the Netherlands where police routinely carry firearms I had a feeling they were actually there to observe and do a job, rather than just be visible for the sake of it. (The local police sent out a flier some month back proudly proclaiming more arrests than ever. That's a good thing?))

hottest blog on the planet these days:

www.ahmadinejad.ir (there is an ok English translation available if you click on the US/English flag in the top right)

explanation:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4790005.stm?ls

As many have pointed out the object of terrorists is to induce fear into the populace.

The objective facts frequently have little bearing on the amount of fear created or the response to it. Some US examples:

Tylenol tampering: several bottles of the pain killer were poisoned. The company withdrew all stocks even though it was unlikely that a single person could have affect more than a small region. Of course fear would have caused sales to drop to zero anyway. The response has been the addition of "tamper proof" packaging on everything from drugs to potatoes. This must cost millions in excessive packaging expense each year.

Anthrax: Several cases which had to be an inside job of weaponized anthrax have caused all white powers sent as a hoax to bring the recipient's firm to a complete standstill. The chances that another batch of anthrax could be smuggled out of a secure facility are now zero. Mail to various government offices is still baked to kill any active agents.

9/11: Adding in all the rest of the attacks worldwide since this date and even including military losses to US and UK forces in the follow on wars brings the total killed to under 10,000. While this is a high number it is less than 1/4 the number killed in auto accidents in the US in just a single year. The results of these acts has been a reorientation of the entire US economy. Militarism and security now eats up almost all the funds that would have gone for infrastructure rebuilding and peaceful R&D. I would guess that the worldwide economic affect is the diversion of close to a trillion dollars so far. The actual economic damage caused by all the attacks is, perhaps, five billion, and at least half is due to the rebuilding costs of the WTC.

So the question is why is the fear level so high? We know that this mindset is encouraged by various governments, but there has to be more to this.

What is needed is some way to reduce the fear level and get people to start thinking in a rational fashion again. FDR and Churchill were good at doing this during periods where the threats were much greater and more immediate. Where are the political leaders of today who are trying to inspire people to confidence instead of fear?

Is there anything we can do to change public perception?

Policies not Politics
---- Daily Landscape