Willothewisp

Posts Tagged ‘Oppression’

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Steven Weinberg.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

So another idiot, one Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was known to US and British authorities – whose brain has been eaten away by the delusion inherent in religion has tried to destroy an airliner and it’s passengers. The law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the USA must be jumping up and down with glee at the opportunity to justify the introduction of yet more powers over the lives of the public, despite the fact that this incident should be putting the spot light on their own utter incompetence despite being in possession of what twenty years ago would have been considered draconian powers.

We all have to understand a simple fact – that complete security is a chimera. It’s a monster that emerges only after all our liberties have been lost, we must wake up to this and understand that freedom carries with it some risk, we cannot be risk free and still travel.

If he had suucced Abdulmutallab could have killed some three hundred people and devastate the lives of relatives of his victims, perhaps an additional five thousand people. It would have been appalling for those involved but the pain would one day ease. The real damage to society will be done not by Abdulmutallab but by those politicians, intelligence and law enforcement officials who will use this failed attack as yet another excuse to further erode civil liberties and bring in yet more laws and regulations, handing them even more rights to control and oppress ordinary people, you and me. They will use it to further expand their numbers and their empire, which in turn will increase their influence and their ability to remove yet more of our rights. It is happening right now, before our very eyes.

Despite the fact that Abdulmutallab’s OWN father had reported their son to the US authorities in person his trouble son was still able to gain a US visa and travel, showing very clearly that security is not being tackled at the correct level. In my opinion Abdulmutallab’s parents were very, very brave people in reporting their own child to a government known to use torture and imprisonment without trial, they are the real heroes here.

Airport security is in fact a mirage. You could publicly strip search every passenger, force them to wear paper jumps suits issued to them at the boarding gate and remove every item of personal property, handcuff each one to their seat and still it would not work. It would not work because flying is a business and business wants to make money so they will continue to employ the cheapest labor to handle baggage and ground duties. For years we have seen airport staff turning out to be illegal immigrants, criminals and others with motivation enough to be a security risk and yet these security risks fail to be addressed, clearly the authorities do not wish to really address the issue so airport security is just a mirage, a gloss to impress, then subdue, control and oppress the travelling public.

In late August this year Abdullah al-Asiri passed through many security checks, searches and even airport style body scanners to gain an audience with Prince Muhammed bin Nayef, a Saudi anti-terror chief in Jeddah. Al-Asiri then detonated a bomb consisting of about half a kilogram of high explosives hidden inside his rectum. The prince escaped with very minor injuries as the blast vented largely downwards rendering the bomb ineffective. On the surface it was a bizarre incident, even more so when you consider the rampant homophobia of islam but as any Western woman who has spent time online will tell you a great many muslim men do seem to have a never ending fascination with that area of human anatomy !

Of course it goes deeper than this. If you really wanted to address to terrorist threats you would tackle the problems that cause it at their roots. You would be serious about addressing the grinding poverty and inequality around the world, you would stop corporations exploiting the poor and most important of all you would tackle the ideology of religions and demand that they adjust to the times we live in and not remain rooted in the fourteenth century. But as we know few have the true courage required to even raise their voice on these issues, let alone actually try and do something about them. It much easier to hide behind the politicians ability to legislate and the law enforcement officer’s gun than really act to address the problem, in the mean time we are slowly loosing our civil rights to those originally tasked with protecting us.

Cowardice in the face of religions and the self interested pursuit of power by politicians and law enforcement bodies are the real threats to us.

Author: Nonke