Living with Terrorism

Over Christmas there was yet another terrorist “attack” in a plane over the US. And as a result, Fuhrer Brown has said that full-body scanners will be brought in to all the main UK airports because ‘they’re crucial in the fight against terrorism”. Which, frankly, is bollocks – the experts don’t even agree that the explosives used by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day would be found by a full-body scanner.

I’ve written before about Security Theatre, and really this is all more of the same.

What makes me really laugh though is all the shite that politicians spout about doing this “because we won’t give in to terrorism”.

• Every single time you take a flight and have to take your shoes off for a search, terrorism caused it.
• Every time you go through a full-body search from now on, that’s been caused by terrorism.
• Any time you can’t take a drink or shampoo abroad, that’s been caused by terrorism.
• Any time you read about ID cards or airport security, that’s been caused by terrorism.

And actually, for pretty much all the above items, you could replace “caused by terrorism” with “caused by the threat of terrorism”. Because most of it isn’t actually related to terrorist acts – it’s related to “plots”, rather than the real thing.

Basically, if you’re travelling by plane, you’re affected by terrorism or the threat of it. Every time you’re affected, you think about why you’re being affected. And bang, terrorism wins yet again.

In fact, the only recent occasion where terrorism really hasn’t affected things (yet, anyway) was the bombings in London on the 7th July. Certainly that event has made people more aware of the risk of terrorism and suicide bombers – but it hasn’t involved extra security checks, or changes to the way we live.

So wittering on about not letting terrorists win, while adding in new pointless security measures “to prevent terrorism”, that’s terrorism winning its case.