September 2004 #3

Insecurity Culture

As the dehumanising images from Beslan and Jakarta fade into the background the latest atrocity goes under-reported. This time it was committed by the Zionist Israelis who ordered the troops into another Palestinian town where an eleven year old girl was shot in the face and died in the arms of her family outside her front door. Her ‘crime’? Watching the ambulances speed past. Don’t tell me who the terrorists are! Nonetheless, we are all suspects.

Last weekend I had to travel by plane to Sydney for a meeting. At Melbourne airport I prepared for the usual ‘security’ check. I emptied the contents of my pockets into the plastic tray and placed my hand luggage on the conveyor. I had a briefcase and my portable recording equipment with me. Here’s what happened.

The lady overseeing the conveyor (you know the one. They ask "have you emptied your pockets" having just watched you do so) asked me if I had any "ring binders" in my brief case. I said yes and she asked me to take it out. I dutifully took it out and she opened it, ran her finger around the ring mechanism and asked me to place it, separately, on the conveyor, which I did. It got more interesting from here.

Every time I have been though this process with my portable recording equipment in the past I have been asked to open the bag and show them what’s inside. You see, as it goes through the X-Ray machine they see wires, connectors and bits that look like weapons and basically I can understand why they are concerned. But not this time.

In over ten years of air travel with this equipment this was the first time I was not asked to show the contents to a ‘security’ officer. In fact, so used to the routine was I that I started to undo the clips before I realised no-one had asked. Thinking someone might have seen me I quickly clipped it back together and walked off to my flight. This process made me think.

I can imagine the scene at the morning briefing. Here’s all these people whose training is rudimentary at best, gathered round their coffee cups as the ‘manager’ steps up to address them about today’s security issues. "Ring Binders", he shouts. "Today we focus on anyone carrying a brief case or who looks like they might be hiding a bomb in their ring binder". Reminding the now wide awake crew that they are the front line troops in the war on ring binders, he bids them god speed and happy hunting. So I became a victim of the latest security scare. The potential that I might be the first ‘ring binder bomber’.

Why is this important and what has it to do with Beslan and the West Bank? We live not in a time and culture of heightened security but a time of transforming us into a deliberate, calculated and perpetuated culture of insecurity.

On the way back at Sydney airport my portable equipment had to make two trips through the X-Ray machine (but I didn’t have to open it) until I was ‘randomly’ chosen to undergo a ‘chemical residue check". This involved an ungloved man running a ‘wand’ over me and my bags to see if any residue from ‘explosives’ could be detected. There were no sterile procedures. His hands were ungloved. He used his bare fingers to handle the sample swab and he expected me to take the procedure seriously. He did however have the power to make me miss my plane. What is this all about?

As mentioned previously, its about creating the conditions in which we begin to not trust people and live in a state of insecurity. We constantly hear that the terrorist could be among us. They look like us. They dress like us. They eat in the same restaurants as us. And on it goes. A constant state of ‘whitewater’ is stirred up in the hope that we will surrender more of our basic rights so that power is transferred from us as citizens to those who want us to believe we are suspects.

I have no idea how children pick up and carry on our culture. But I find myself looking at the group of men in boots, forced to remove them at the ‘security’ gate and place them on the X-Ray conveyor before proceeding and wondering if the Scouting movement is harbouring not ring binder bombers but knot tying terrorists? I see the businessman forced to take off his belt and hold his pants up as go passes through the metal detector and wonder if his company is really a front for an insurgent group. This is serious! I make no joke because its all about creating the illusion of preparedness while actually creating a state of mind that causes us to not trust and to feel not secure.

I used to have no problem with going though the demands of these ‘front liners’. After all they’re just wage slaves like the rest of us. But now, it has descended into high farce. I mean, what was I going to do with my ring binder? Pinch someone’s finger till they submitted? I think not.

The big picture atrocities like Beslan, Jakarta and the West Bank are presented as if they are far away and certainly they are. But, for most of us ‘right minded’ people, we try and understand not only the grief but also the context and background of why these things happen. We are told that they happen because of ‘security’ lapses or some such excuse or, in the case of the West Bank, to ‘secure’ Israel’s territory (which it isn’t anyway).

We cant know what its like to experience such atrocities but we can be forced to watch men, women and children be humiliated at airport security checkpoints, at public gatherings and at large sporting events (keep an eye on the AFL and ARL grand final arrangements. Turn up early is my advice). The development of an insecurity culture has only one possible motive and that is to change the way we view the world and each other and as a result to surrender, against our better judgement, our right to basic freedoms.

In Russia, we have just heard, the central government is going to cancel the electoral process and reinstate central control over all local affairs. This is being described as "undemocratic" and retrograde. It is something we, in the West, would resist so we are told. But would we? Would we seriously resist laws that allow police to detain without charge, question without legal representation, hold for an indefinite period and, if required, withhold evidence that may be prejudicial to their case? Would we resist that? Well we didn’t! Those laws are already there and could be used at any time against us. In other words, we don’t have to have our ‘democracy’ threatened by ‘security scares’, we’ve already let it be taken from us.

The insecurity culture being instilled in us has no other purpose than to allow those who would laud it over us to do so with our own consent. We allow our governments, made up of ‘our representatives’ to enact laws that remove from us the right to feel free. I want to feel secure and I don’t want to distrust my neighbour. I want to be able to move about and feel like I’m not the target of some madman. These are basic needs. But what I increasingly see and feel is that I am a target of any potential harmful act and viewed by my society, at the same time, as a potential risk. The insecurity culture brings into our hearts and minds the feelings and thoughts that everyone around us in not our ally or friend but our potential enemy and foe. I, you, we are a suspect and product of the insecurity culture that is being developed with our consent.

I hope that a Beslan, Jakarta, West Bank or other act of terror never occurs to you or your loved ones. I hope that we never have to see, on our soil, the devastation of a Kuta Club or World Trade Centre. But at the same time I hope the citizens of Iraq, Chechnya, the West Bank or anywhere else will not have to continue bear the brunt of being the stage in which the fantasy that creates the conditions for the insecurity culture to emerge are played out with devastating results. Our sisters and brothers in these places deserve, as we do, the right to feel free and to be treated, as we also need to be treated, as responsible, caring, loving, welcoming human beings.

To steal the phrasing of a famous movie scene, "I am not a ring binder bomber! I am a human being." To that I can add, "They are not my enemy! They are my brothers and sisters in humanity."