Monday, June 02, 2008


Highjacking At T-Shirt Point

First, allow me to suggest that all of this airport security is really a scam to put in place a system by which all prospective travelers must be cleared by government to leave their current location. Additionally, it gives them the information as to just where they're going. The Third Reich did just this sort of thing--in a much lower-tech fashion as befitted the time--in Germany during the period leading up to WWII. Looking at the way the US federal government (and others) is arranging things, it parallels the German model fairly well.

Although, as we all know, the whole of what is sniggeringly called "Homeland Security" is dressed in the trappings of keeping Americans safe from terrorists.

First it was guns. Then it was knives. Then it was anything that could be remotely imagined to be able to break the skin--such as pen knives, nail clippers and--I kid you not--knitting needles. I haven't yet heard whether they confiscate blind folks' canes. Then, they started inspecting shoes. May their hands all develop athletes' foot. They started confiscating bottles of shampoo and tubes of toothpaste. They started feeling up people's genitals and women's breasts. Checking out pregnant women's abdomens.

I remember when the airport people would open the door. They'd check each passenger's ticket and let them walk out to a portable stairway that led to the door, where a stewardess would take a look at your ticket and give directions to your seat. Ah! Those were the days. The only federal sloths at the airport were safely confined to the tower, and were rarely seen.

'Tis true that the airlines, who have a true, rational interest in keeping dangerous individuals from interfering with the plane's flight to its destination, were very lax concerning their responsibilities along those lines. Several highjackings to Cuba should have lit a bulb somewhere, but didn't. I suspect there were federal restrictions as to what could be done, that interfered with the airlines' best interest.

Making a long entry even longer, I have to refer you all to the most moronic (not by far, but still, pretty dumb) event along these lines. It happened at London's Heathrow (where else?) and has cause groans of derision and peals of laughter all round the civilized world. As reported in Thisislondon.co.uk, a young man was refused boarding on an airliner and threatened with arrest for wearing a t-shirt with the image of a Transformer!! A Transformer that has some sort of machine gun for an arm.

Let's pause for a moment to allow ourselves to get up off the floor and recompose.

During a day in which there were at least a two teen-agers killed in knife attacks reported 'pon that same news page, whose murderers (if caught) face no more than a couple of years in stir, Heathrow officials are worried about a bloody (to use local vernacular) t-shirt!

This in a country in which self defense is illegal.

Englishmen! Englishwomen! Run, don't walk off that island, where insanity rules.

V, where are you when we need you?

Warm regards,

Col. Hogan
Stalag California

6 comments:

Oswald Bastable said...

We ARE getting a lot of them moving to NZ.

The downward slide to the pit is a bit slower here...

Col. Hogan said...

Oswald,

....And the country is a mite prettier.

T. F. Stern said...

How about the 4th grade kid in Mass. where the teacher confiscated the empty shell casings by a teacher, given a 5 day suspension and threatened with probation? The shell casings were given to the boy after a 21 gun salute by the military. I can see how that boy is a real trouble maker and danger to his class mates. He will be making a rifle to fit the empty shell casings and then wage war on all those who wouldn't offer him Twinkies at lunch.

Col. Hogan said...

TF,

I heard about that, and I wrote a scathing (but polite) email to the supt of children's prisons in that Mass town.

I reminded her that not so many years ago, nearly all boys carried pocket knives to school and everywhere else. They usually got them as gifts from their dads.

It was a thing that boys did.

Ol' BC said...

No wonder London elected a conservative. Look what the labour party brought them.(not to mention they may be predominately muslim shortly.)

MathewK said...

Heard about that t-shirt thing, madness eh. If he had worn an Death to America or had Osama's face on his t-shirt they may have bumped him up to business class.

On a side note has anyone noticed that the most popular comic book hero movies in this age are ones where the civilians are never armed. Spiderman, batman, fantastic 4, all that, everyone is unarmed, except the bad guys. Notice how popular they are, like we're yearning to live in this fantasy world or something.

I wonder if anyone's thought that if we all had guns, we wouldn't need them. Joker wouldn't try his crap if he knew he's get shot to hell by folks in the street. My favorite is The Punisher and i think it's a sign of the times we live in, a bad sign, that no one is making a re-make of him.