Homeland Security. Or Not

Flying out of NYC's JFK last July, deeply middle-aged, geeky, wussy me got selected for enhanced security and searching. So you know the guys running the check-in points are... well, the job security is a little unnerving....

Anyway:

I've been debating for a while whether I should post this or not. This photo was taken in flight in the washroom of an airplane after passing through security at an international terminal. Yes, that's a box cutter, like what was used in the 9/11 attacks (taken on accidentally). Not only that but they searched the bag that contained it and missed it. Not only that, but they did require pouring out a coffee that had been bought at the entrance to the security line-up. Well, that made me feel safe.

I was talking to a friend recently that works in terrorism prevention and they were expressing some surprise that terrorist attacks weren't common on US and Western soil, both because security is so lax (and incompetent), and because ultimately if someone is willing to do a suicide-style attack, it's very difficult to defend against. Their primary theory was that the people who are "calling the shots" — giving the suicide attack orders and paying the bills — are somehow profiting (a la war profiteering) from sustained war, so they don't want to escalate it to the point where it has to be stopped.

If you want an example of this where both powers want "the wrong thing for their people" that's a bit more obvious, look at opium growing in Afghanistan. US and International corporations make billions waging the war. Al Qaeda and the Taliban make billions of dollars from the sale of poppies for heroin, which also fund the criminal and terrorist operations, while keeping the West at war with them, ensuring a chaotic state of never-ending war so long as the cycle remains unbroken.

However, the world has a morphine shortage, a legitimate product derived from poppies. If the poppy industry was legalized and the product went to the medical industry instead, the farmers would get paid more, the druglords wouldn't be able to funnel money into terrorism any more, and the war would start to end.

However, there is more money in war (for the one "side") and drugs (for the other), so we keep up this insane contract where the legitimate uses for the poppy are kept criminal in order to keep the money flowing to the richest people on the planet. If you're at the top of the class/power pyramid, war is a very good way to stay at the top assuming you can sustain it...

Link.