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Creating a Market for Security
Paul Craig Roberts
V dare
Thursday April 12, 2007
The War on Terror is a marketing campaign for security industries
and terrorism experts. The latter are pulling in the consulting
fees, and the former are rapidly inventing new products that enable
“our” government to watch our every move and to know
our location at every moment.
Although it should be working on its corporate ethics (see: BAE
corruption probe, BBC, January 7 2007,), BAE Systems is working
on an “Onboard Threat Detection System.” The system
consists of tiny cameras and microphones implanted in airline seats.
The Onboard Threat Detection System records every facial expression
and every whisper of every passenger, allowing watchful eyes and
ears to detect terrorists before they can strike. BAE says its system
is so sophisticated that it can differentiate between nervous flyers
and real terrorists.
Think about this for a moment. Aside from the Big Brother aspect,
the Onboard Threat Detection System is either redundant or the security
authorities have no confidence in the expensive and intrusive airport
security through which passengers are herded.
We have reached the point where we can no longer fly with more
than three ounces of lotions, shampoo, toothpaste, and deodorants,
because the government pretends that we might concoct a bomb out
of the ingredients. Three ounces of shampoo is safe, but three and
one-half ounces blows the airliner to smithereens.
We must shed coats, shoes, and belts to pass through airport security.
We are wanded and patted down. Luggage is X-rayed and searched.
IDs and boarding passes are endlessly checked as we proceed from
check-in to gate. And we still need an Onboard Threat Detection
System to monitor our expressions and words.
Other firms are developing chip implants that identify a person
to scanning machines and allow our movements to be monitored by
GPS systems. Still others are developing ID cards that have retina
scans and our DNA. No doubt we will be required to have both.
All of this is to protect us from terrorists.
No thought is given to whether the intrusion from the protection
is a greater threat than possible terrorist acts by foreigners protesting
American hegemony over their own lives. If American hegemony has
this big a price, I can do without it.
Some of us remember when it was possible to read a book in an airport
while waiting on a flight. Today it can’t be done without
ear plugs. TVs blaring the latest propaganda compete with incessant
repetitive terrorist warnings interrupted by announcements of flight
cancellations and gate changes. The cacophony of sound is maddening.
If only we could go back to the days of crying babies and screaming
children.
Once a terrorist warning is produced, it lives forever. Every US
airport endlessly plays the same ancient warning from decades ago
instructing passengers to carefully watch their luggage and not
to accept items from other people to carry aboard flights. This
warning dates from pre-security days when the explosion of an airliner
in flight was blamed on a passenger accepting a parcel from a stranger
to carry to a person waiting at the flight’s destination.
Allegedly, the parcel was a bomb.
To hear this warning today thirty or forty times after passing
through security makes a person wonder about the efficiency of airport
security. Were all those warrantless searches pointless?
The greatest problem confronted by marketers of anti-terrorist
products is the shortage of terrorist attacks. The only terrorist
events Americans have experienced are the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. As for 9/11, we still don’t have
a good explanation of how so much security failed in one morning.
To prime the market for anti-terrorism products, the Bush administration
used 9/11 to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. The Bush administration
has been attempting to occupy both countries for several years at
a cost to taxpayers estimated at 1,000 billion dollars.
The main result of the military action has been to stir up resentment
among Muslims in the hopes that the resentment will find expression
in terrorist acts in the US. We have been made less safe in order
that entrepreneurs can make big bucks protecting us with new security
products. It would have been much better just to give the 1,000
billion dollars to the security firms and not invaded the two countries.
Keep that in mind when you are being monitored in your airliner
seat and are blinking too much because you still wear the old hard
contact lenses or are suffering from allergies. Excessive blinking
is a telltale sign of stress and means that the blinker is about
to commit a terrorist act. When you are arrested don’t bother
arguing with the foolproof Onboard Threat Detection System. Just
be thankful that your senators and representative received enough
campaign donations from security firms to be concerned with your
security.
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
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