The Aura Of Safety
As a clotheswhore who travels like Liz Taylor (but with uglier luggage and minus the entourage), when I'm flying home from a trip, I always find that there are a few items that challenge the laws of bag-packing physics. Of course, that's why boyfriends with untapped space in their bags were invented. As usual, on a recent trip home, via Tampa, I handed off my overflow to my boyfriend. Well, on this trip, my boyfriend decided, at the airport, to roll his rollaboard on the plane. It just so happened that one of the items I'd given him was an elegant little desk set I'd bought: petite scissors, a mini stapler, and mini ruler. I'd completely forgotten this desk set until I spotted my boyfriend putting all his clothes back on after getting stripped and felt up by the TSA. A TSA searcher was going through his bag. My boyfriend couldn't figure out what the problem could be, as he travels all the time for his job, and had never gotten searched before. "Scissors," the searcher said, "We saw scissors in your bag." Uh-oh. I pointed out that I'd given him my scissors set. The TSA guy said he had to take them. I ask if I could mail them to myself. Yes, I could, the TSA guy said -- if I exited the airport and went through the metal detector again, and then... My scissors were history. Grrr...Like they were actually dangerous!...especially now that we have locking cockpit doors, blah blah blah.
I railed to the searcher (who wasn't a bad guy) that I was losing my scissors because people believe in god ("If everybody stopped believing in god right at this moment, nobody would be...[I was afraid to say "getting blown up"]... inconvenienced at airports!"). Fuming, I left the scissors, and the boyfriend and I went to our gate. As I sat down, I realized something and started to laugh: The TSA guy had gotten my scissors, but he'd missed the knitting kit I'd bought for my neighbor -- two metal knitting needles!!, instructions on how to make booties or whatever it is people knit, and a three inch metal yarn needle!! As there was never and never will be any danger of me knitting, violently or otherwise, I swiftly decided against declaring my contraband. But, the incident got me thinking: How much sense does it make, really, to take away scissors from people boarding planes, or to make passengers cut their rubber chicken with plastic knives? To me, this seems to be yet another measure designed mainly to make passengers feel more secure, but which doesn't actually make us more secure.
After boarding, I mentioned my thoughts to my boyfriend, a researcher for a crime novelist, who always runs around lugging piles of crime data. Naturally, he was packin'. He yanked out his laptop to show me a really fascinating PDF (click first item on page) of concealed weapons from the FBI, including photos of a James Bondian deck of fake playing cards, made of thin metal. The cards can be thrown "with deadly results," confirms Curt Anderson, writing for the AP. And there's more; much more:
Knives ... concealed in belt buckles, hairbrushes and combs, working cigarette lighters, crucifixes, lipstick cases, canes, umbrellas, keychains, pens, mock credit cards and money clips. While many of the blades are small, others can be at least 4 inches long and some are sword-length.One fake key made in Japan conceals a knife and a smaller key that could be used to escape from handcuffs.
One device, called a "shuckra," is a metal tube containing a wire that, when locked into place, becomes a hardened spike that could be used as a dagger.
There are false name-brand soup, hairspray, shaving cream and cleanser cans with hidden compartments -- the FBI calls them "can safes" -- where weapons or dangerous substances could be placed. Fake books with hollowed centers are used as safes.
To me, this PDF poses a question: If we really want to prevent terrorism, do we take away scissors at the airport or do we take out leaders of terrorist cells? Josie Glausiuz poses this question and more to anthropologist Scott Atran in "The Surprises Of Suicide Terrorism", in Discover. First, she wonders about terrorists' motivation. Based on research of suicide bombers, Atran calls it "utter nonsense" to deem terrorism the result of insanity, or despair or hopelessness:
The CIA released a report in 2001 on the psychology and sociology of terrorism, and they basically said these people are perfectly sane. If you look at the history of these kinds of extreme acts, they're pretty much directed by middle-class or higher-middle-class intellectuals. They always have been. Never have they been directed by wacky, crazed, homicidal nuts. The Japanese kamikaze of World War II were, by the way, extremely intelligent guys. If you read their diaries, they were German romantics, reading Goethe and Schiller, and quite conscious of the efforts of the state to manipulate them.
But, "How on earth," asks Glausiuz, "Does anyone sane work up the gumption to blow himself up, together with what is often hundreds of bystanders?" Atran responds:
Exactly the same way that you get soldiers on the front line of an army to sacrifice themselves for their buddies. What these cells do is very similar to what our military, or any modern military, does. They form small groups of intimately involved "brothers" who literally sacrifice themselves for one another, the way a mother would do for her child. They do it by manipulating universal heartfelt human sentiments that I think are probably innate and part of biological evolution. In fact, I think most culture is a manipulation of innate desires. It's the same way that our fast-food industry manipulates our desires for sugars and fats, or the way the pornography industry manipulates people to get all hot about pixels on a screen or on wood pulp.
"Why does it matter whether we understand the making of a suicide terrorist?"
Huge amounts of money were being offered, at least on the horizon, for science-related defense research, most of it going to things like bioterrorism prevention. There were all these harebrained schemes--they're still around--to have a Radio Free Arabia. They're going to bombard these people with information about how good our society is, our goals, and that's supposed to win the war on terrorism. If you look at the February 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, you'll see they plan to introduce programs against poverty and illiteracy. These ideas seem to me just completely wrong. First, the people who carry out terrorist acts are already educated. Second, they're not poor, so reducing poverty isn't going to do a thing.
"So what's your strategy for combating suicide terrorism?"
I think it has to be a multilayered strategy. You've got to be able to--and this I'm all for--go after the guys who operate the cells. Take them out. Get rid of them. Jail them or kill them, because they are not willing to compromise. What do you do with somebody who says, "All Americans and Jews have got to die"? The point of talking to such people has passed. Whatever the grievances were that caused such people to have such ideas, if they show that they're willing to implement them, then you've just got to make a decision whether you want to see this guy survive or you and your people survive.
(Atran piece via Volokh.com)
I don't think the Islamonazis really believe in God, because they are idolaters. Look at the way they constantly march around holding up graven images -- i.e.: those giant pictures of Osama, or Saddam, or some other fetid little emir. They may believe in God the way you spell it -- "god" -- which is the pagan way, and historically the fascists have been great pagans. But they don't believe in God.
Cathy Seipp at September 28, 2003 10:50 AM
"Fetid little emir"! Cathy, you're the best.
(Amy Alkon) at September 28, 2003 11:08 AM
I say leave the scissors and other implements -- my nail clippers, Leatherman, etc -- alone!
I promise you that after 9/11, the next idiot who stands up in a plane wielding any sort of potentially dangerous instrument, from serrated plastic knife to #2 lead pencil -- will be immediately pounced on and killed by his fellow passengers. I think the, "Don't worry. We are just taking this plane to Beirut where we will demand the release of political prisoners, or kill you all one by one," just won't wash anymore.
Amy, what we need is a big pink ray from outer space that blankets the earth and erases the "my god/God is better than your God/god" stuff -- and tattoos the golden rule on our foreheads.
David at September 29, 2003 4:15 PM