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This is the Eye of Grace. This is where the world is set straight before your simple minds. This is where the shit hits the fan.
You are nothing without me.
Open Mouth - Insert Camel - Swallow
National security is not an equal opportunity affair. You may hate to stand in line, America, and I don't blame you - especially since some others don’t have to as they belong to some "Circle of Trust". Lately there has been a little stir in the news because of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney’s attack against a Capitol Hill police officer who didn’t let her just pass on the side, without going through the metal detectors, on her way into work. She was stopped as she tried to go through the “no check” gate with the other Congress people since she wasn’t wearing her Congress staff “pin” that identifies her as a “no threat” person. She smacked the copper in the head with her cell phone and was then charged with assaulting a police officer. Now she’s out there on the barricades, rallying support to her cause from people like Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover, claiming that all this only happened in the first place because she’s black. (Yeah, because Hillary would get away with smacking a cop over the head with a phone. Sure.)
See, this could make an interesting article about ethnic minorities playing the ever so effective race card whenever the shit hits the fan. Or this could be about Mrs. McKinney’s stint as the very anti-Christ of a good politician and the very epitome of what is wrong with this country - considering we elect people like this to represent our interests in the first place.
But, no… I am not going there this time.
The reason Mrs. McKinney was asked to step through the security check point was because she wasn’t wearing her little Congress pin that identifies her as one of the 435 Congressional delegates. Apparently she had recently changed her hair-do and the security cops didn’t recognize her, so they did their job and pulled her to the side.
What the fuck?
Do you mean to tell me that all it takes to get an all access pass to the inner sanctum of American politics is a fucking pin? And even if the Congress people are not wearing it, for whatever reason, Capitol Hill police should just take them at face value? Who the fuck came up with this ingenious measure of national security? Bin Laden?
It got me thinking… After all the crap that has been said and done after 9/11, with the Patriot Act enforced and increased security all around, the only people paying the price is the little people. Us regular Joe Schmoes. The American government is straining out gnats and swallowing camels whole here, hull and hair, in order to keep up the appearance of actually knowing what the hell they’re doing. It’s all a big sham to keep us fat and happy in the delusion that things are being taken care of – that our government is on the ball.
If I was a terrorist all I would have to do, to wreck some serious ass, is to produce a makeshift Congress Safety Pin, put it on my collar, strap a dirty bomb to my back, and then just march into the next Congressional hearing. Wonderful.
Not that it is that hard to be a successful terrorist anyway… The pension plan sucks and you face termination pretty much every day, but the opportunities are there in plenty. Airport security is “tighter than ever”, supposedly. Well, let me give you a first-hand example of how this shit doesn’t work from Heathrow Airport in London, where they claim to have the highest security anywhere in the world.
When you approach the security check, right before you enter the international boarding area, you are asked to put your bags, metal objects, jackets and shoes on the belt to be screened by serious looking geezers with big badges. Fair enough. Business as usual. Not too big of a risk that anything slips by there, right? Then, before you, yourself, step through the metal detectors, you get to slip your empty luggage trolley through a little trolley gate on the side to the left - but the trolley has to be empty… of course. Seems just about right to you as well, doesn’t it? Nothing there, right?
Wrong.
You could, without any problems whatsoever, duct tape pretty much anything to the bottom of one of those trolleys and slip it through the non-check trolley gate. The little luggage cart has a solid piece of plastic or metal in the back, an ankle guard, that would hide pretty much anything the size of a .44 Magnum or worse. I figured that they would eventually change this - that they just never got around to it in the midst of all the things to upgrade in the beginning - but no… it is still like that, five years later. No guards, no alarms, and no detectors on that gate – and millions of trolleys going by each week. Do I have to fucking tell them how to do their jobs? Well, I guess I am now anyway, right?
Before you laugh at British airport security…
Nothing slips through the cracks at JFK, right? That’s one tight motherfucker, don’t you think? How would you go about getting some serious shit on board a plane heading for, say, Washington, DC?
Well, you could be a dumbass and try to smuggle in a weapon yourself, inevitably getting caught in the security check - or you could just kidnap the pilot’s wife and kids and tell him you will put his dear family feet first through a meat grinder, inch by inch, unless he takes this weapon cache on board for you and hide it in the back pantry. What is he gonna do? Choose the safety of some fucking Dilberts he doesn’t know over that of his twin girls and beloved wife? No way, Jose. He’s going to apply himself wholeheartedly to the task of getting Ahmed’s guns and knives on board that fucking plane, come hell or high water. You know why this is possible? Because nobody checks the luggage of the flight staff. Never mind the pilot… the little flight attendants march right on through as well. You think you could get to them, using the same manipulative methods of persuasion? Hell, yeah. If we made flight staff also pass through the scan we would immediately eliminate the possibility of terrorist extortion against key figures in security position. (Technically they could still be made to fly the plane into, say, a skyscraper – but that doesn’t seem very likely, now, does it? </sarcasm>)
This is why everybody should be checked, without discrimination or exclusion. No more walk-through lanes for people in the “Circle of Trust”. Nobody. Not anywhere. Not you, me or the personal assistant to the President. You don’t know what is going on in that guy’s head or what the hell is going on in his house right that second. For all you know some Ahmed could be cauterizing the guy’s daughter’s leg stumps with a blow torch so she won’t bleed to death just yet in case he needs to put her back in the grinder a little later if he doesn’t get that affirmative phone call an hour from now. Don’t overestimate people’s love for their country over that of their family. Family comes first, always. I would take every single one of you fuckers out before I would harm a hair on the heads of my wife or daughter, or much less let someone else do it. Make no bones about it.
Airports are a big fiasco anyway. Did you know that all New York airport logistics are mob run? Especially JFK and La Guardia. This means that the people with the highest security clearances on the runways, loading and unloading goods in and out of the planes, are organized criminals with a taste for money. Fortunately, most Italian-Americans have an immense love for their country and wouldn’t run errands for foreign terrorists, but that is beside the point. We just have to gamble on their patriotism and cross our fingers? And who’s to say things won’t change? Club Goombah today, the Russians tomorrow? They are getting more influential at JFK as it is. And then, what, the Arab mafia the day after that? That Arab mafia would be another word for the very same extremist Muslim terror organizations we are scared shitless of today.
While determined officers shake down some 95-year old lady in the White House security check point for having a knitting needle in her purse, the President of our country just recently tried to sign away US port authority to the Arabs, without batting an eyelash. Didn’t even cross his goddamn mind that this might not be in the best interest of national security.
Meanwhile, hundreds of suspicious figures are bereaved of their civil rights in government detention centers, awaiting to be thoroughly investigated and questioned. Some have been there for years, without lawyers or any contact with their families. You think all of them are guilty? Of course not. Following that logic, we should just cut to the chase and arrest all educated white males in their 30’s, since they are prone to becoming demented serial killers.
Straining out the gnats and swallowing the camels. That is the US security policy we all live and die by these days. Remember that the next time you’re asked to explain the metal plate in your head to some unforgiving security officer at the airport, while that pilot with the nervous twitch just sails on by.
Most of all it’s a matter of general attitude, not about the measures taken. To enforce proper national security all the people in that nation have to be subject to the same methods of terror prevention. Otherwise the system fails, every single time. Terrorists are way shrewder than the average Joe Schmoe – these people live and die for this shit - so to think we are stopping anybody the way we do business today is just silly. If I, Grace Schmuck, can sit here and rant for 25 minutes about what is wrong and where some of the loop holes are, chances are pretty good that most potential terrorists mapped out all of those options years ago. There are holes big enough to sail the Swiss navy through in our attitude towards national security. If we are so on the ball in the war against terrorism, if our government with all its resources of secret intelligence is so advanced in its thinking, then why is it that we still have this flawed logic? Is it sheer stupidity? Is it naivety? Is it neglect? Maybe it’s just ignorance?
I’ve said it before: Every organization – be it governmental politics or a smaller commercial business – should have a cynical arrogant bastard such as I employed as a professional nay-sayer. Someone who punches holes through rigid company logics and points out inconsistencies before somebody else on the outside does. One would think that when it comes to something as important as the security of America, our very country, they would already have thought of that, huh?
But, no… My phone still ain’t ringing.
So while I’m waiting I’ll just make myself an all access pass to the Capitol building out of this old cufflink here, in case I need to go there quickly and don’t want to wait in line with the simple commoners. Or maybe I should just ride a camel all the way to the White House and ask them to open wide and say Aaahhhh.
~ The Eye of Grace ~
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The actual pin
a.k.a.
The Key to the City
