TERROR

Vesselin Vesselinov

            At the door everybody lines up silently. Guards watch carefully, eyes steely. The newcomers strip naked, their possessions searched and taken away. The bodies are ordered to spread their legs and open their behinds. One by one, their ‘body cavities’ are inspected. And better nothing hidden there is found. The newcomers are not alone – along with them, their long records arrived. New data is added right away – depending on inspection. Some don’t look cheerful, or don’t look the way it was ordered, such deviancies are noted at once and recorded. The most suspect are taken away for unknown, entirely hidden procedures. Some don’t come back. Welcome to prison! Welcome to GULAG!

            Welcome to the airport! The above gory experience was reserved for hardened criminals entering maximum security prisons. Tiny number of individuals, already sentenced for repeated and nasty crimes – nothing really strange in their case. Massive numbers subjected to the same were the countless victims of Nazi Germany and Commie USSR, the Totalitarian states, which are supposed to belong to ancient history by now. And this is the frightening ‘now’: what was condemned as insane cruelty, particular to Totalitarian regimes, is ‘normal’, ‘standard’, ‘safe’ practice in the cradles of democracy. What could be next? Well, there is no ‘next’ – everything already is in place now, and the march of oppression goes on fast. It has nothing to do with ‘security’ and ‘safety’ of passengers – it is entirely against them, gradually encompassing the whole population not of single state, but the global one. Now, this is something the old totalitarian bastards were not able to achieve.

            An attempt for exploding a passenger airplane failed on December 25, 2009. The aftermath is… against ordinary people, not against the ‘terrorists’. For there is no terrorist arrested by the ‘security’ agents so far. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was tackled by the passengers of the plane, not by the ‘specialists’. And let’s start from here, because this is the most suspicious part: according to what is known by now, there was plenty of information about him available to the ‘security specialists’. Including warnings from Abdulmutallab’s father. Nothing done… in the USA, the official word is ‘screw-up’. Fine, let it be. How this man ended on the plane, though? After so many searches and interrogations at the airports? I personally remember Amsterdam ‘security’ from 2008  – it was almost fantastic ‘process’, too long to narrate in full, so just the highlights: a physical ticket was required in time when nobody issues ‘hard copy’ tickets; passport was ‘insufficient’ and generally invalid document of identity; the ‘security’ wanted to know what I have been doing in a country where I haven’t ever been in my life; they wanted to know why I looked ‘unhappy’. It was exactly the same interrogation I remember from encounters with Communist Secret Police, including the anonymity of interrogators. And these guys, asking questions impossible to satisfy with any answer, missed Umar Farouk and his bomb… However, they do not miss any of the countless ordinary passengers! So did miss him the US vast empire of ‘security services’, who do not miss millions of ordinary passengers either. Panic and fear.

            Next step: emergency meetings called by US President Barack Obama, resulting with a vow to tighten air security.

            There is something ominous in the aftermath: it was established that the ‘security’ agencies failed. But their failure – or incompetence – bounces off them and lands in the field of ordinary citizens. Obama took the ‘responsibility’ on himself, nobody is punished, including the man taking the responsibility. Instead, already draconian measures at the airports will increase – and if it is only that, it would be kind of acceptable. The real trouble is that what happens at airports does not end there – it is just part of vast penetration of individual life and annihilation of individual freedoms and rights, deemed ‘sacred’ by constitution. Good bye to them… what is constitution worth after that is really the paper it was written on: may be used for wiping of a ‘body cavity’.

The summary: ‘security’ agencies fail and to correct their failure the general population must be subjected to more humiliating and outright dangerous scrutiny and record building and collecting. This is exactly what the totalitarian regimes did.

            And there is no end to it: even before the Americans implemented new screws for the people, Canada acted.

            Body scanners… what to start with? As part of the ‘old’ (by now) routine, personal computers may be – and are – searched for two-folded reason: one is the pretence of acting against intellectual piracy and protection of copy rights; the other is pornography, and particularly child pornography. Now, let see the balance:  personal usage of pornography is at best suspect, leading to further investigation (may be not full arrest, but surely missing the flight and very likely confiscation of computer. Along with recording data about the ‘offender’). Possession of child pornography (including fictional writing produced by the same person and not intended for showing to anybody else) is a criminal offence, leading – unlike murder – to jail sentence. That for the individual. For the state – the opposite: anonymous, hidden, ‘specialist’ is permitted to watch endless porno on his screen – kids included. No problem… ‘whatever keeps us safe’… ‘whatever’ is limitless, though. For a start, it is not going to be long before images of naked passengers appear on the internet. And there is no way such ‘data’ will be just for the moment – it will be collected and preserved. Your personal  record starts at the airport – you enter innocent and exit with police dossier. How is to build ‘watchlist system’ otherwise?

            The second point is efficiency of the scanners. Let’s forget even the required position one has to take… which is the position of criminal under arrest. Humiliating for the person, but also highly visible to others, who naturally develop suspicions and fears – innocent people are not searched. Simple… yet, small problem so far: much more important is that – at least as told – the human face is invisible. What about something hidden in ‘body cavities’?  Well, according to the results of trial, the scanning machines ‘didn’t meet the security agency’s expectations’. Such admission surely begs the question ‘what is the purpose of undressing everybody’? Seemingly, the scanners are not going to catch terrorists – but will catch everybody else! Why the millions have to be undressed? Only Totalitarian states aimed at penetrating the whole of personality: private life, individual possessions, the body… the mind, hopefully. Nothing else comes to mind, since the scanners are unable to do their intended job, but are implemented hurriedly.

            The hurry becomes understandable when another piece of information is added – high ranking ‘specialist’ of Canadian ‘security’ recently said that the measures so far are hardly enough and travelers have to prepare themselves for new measures: explicitly, search of ‘body cavities’. This is coming! Strip naked and position yourself. Uniformed – but most likely plain clothed – ‘specialists’ rudely insert their fingers into your ‘cavities’. And they will comment you, and scold you, and make jokes about you, but mostly will treat you like shit and interrogate you. And they will make sure you know how bored they are. Please, don’t look unhappy! It is a threat to ‘security’.

            And it is… for you are the ‘threat’, by your very existence. You have to be saved from yourself –  they already tell you so: it is for your own security we have to search you and treat you like a criminal. Do you want to feel ‘safe’ in the airplane? Hands up! Let’s see what’s inside your arse! Open your mouth! Why is your breath stinking? Open up! Let me see what you hide in this vagina of yours! Gee, the nerve some people have… deliberately waiting for her period, so to make me look at such a dirty tampon! You are under arrest! A tampon may be used as a weapon! Bad breath may be used as a poison, a weapon indeed!

            Well, this is articulation of the cry for ‘whatever takes to keep us safe’. But still it does not stop then and there and old Totalitarianism has to be recalled – its essence at least.

            The essence of crime in Totalitarianism is human existence. One is guilty simply because one is alive. Whoever is alive may deviate from the ‘correct line’, but there is never sure way of knowing in advance what could be in the human mind. So, everybody is suspect – including Party members, high placed functionaries, and members of the ‘security’. Everybody! The principle of innocence unless proven guilty is abolished: it is not even perverted into guilty until proven innocent, but exactly abolished. One can be let go, but not because of innocence – it is only temporary and incomplete freedom, resulting from lack of sufficiently incriminating evidence at the moment. Record of the person is made, maintained, and used in the future, however. One can be arrested again – and may be let go or not, but the record grows. Sometimes to the point of becoming so large that its sheer bulk incriminates the person. Charges are not important and often there are none – look at the best description in Solzhenitsyn’s ‘One Day In he Life Of Ivan Denisovich’, where neither the interrogator, nor the ‘accused’ were able to formulate even imagined crime. And note that the accused has ‘to help’ the interrogator –  expected to provide the ‘organs’ with convenient crime, for instance. The lack of even imagined crime is not a problem – the accused goes to concentration camp. It is enough incriminating that he was arrested – after all, ‘innocent’ people are not arrested, so if one is arrested, there must be a reason.

            But crimes are secondary at best – the danger is in the fact that a person is alive. Only to living person ‘crimes’ can be trumped: a dead Jew is useless, but one alive is criminally dangerous. Dead ‘bourgeois’ is useless, but living son of a ‘bourgeois’ is very dangerous, even when a loyal Party member. And that is the crime – a Jew, a ‘bourgeois’ ancestry,  ‘terrorist’. Since such ‘criminality’ is not obviously visible, the net is enlarged to encompass the whole society at all time; the criminals are ‘hiding’, hence, extraordinary measures are employed to catch them. Measures, nullifying ordinary law, and permitting vast penetration of individual life. In the same time the whole society is constantly fed with fear – violent enemies are among us, endangering exactly the personal security and safety of everybody. They hide, so the public is asked to be increasingly vigilant. Denunciations are encouraged and become moral value; failure to denounce is made a crime. Random searches and arrests complement the measures – for the devious ‘enemy’ is plotting so secretly, there is no way to depend even on society of stool pigeons. The ‘invisibility’ of the ‘enemies’ perpetuates extraordinary measures to the point they become the norm: the very fact that there are no enemies in sight makes them… ‘real’. Which means new and more vigorous, and tight, measures of ‘security’. The state of emergency becomes permanent, people are constantly arrested, everybody is under observation, records grow, nobody is safe from… the state.

            If it was just the state, it would have been only half-bad. The biggest problem is mass mentality, easily buying the notion of ‘security’. No wonder the Soviet Totalitarians used folkish ‘wisdom’ to justify their excess: ‘one can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs’. Millions of Jews were ‘broken’ for the Nazi omelette and many more millions for the Soviet one… And the general population did not object… you arrest and put in concentration camps thousands and among them may be ten ‘enemies’. Good catch! The rest is a mistake (never so great to reverse a sentence, though!) – but once ‘we’ catch all enemies, everything will be fine. Mistakes are regretful, but no big deal. No deal at all, actually, for mistakes are never corrected, even when admitted: when ‘incompetent specialist’ is sacked, those arrested by him are not freed. Nor dossiers changed.

            How different are we today? Not at all anymore, except for the contemporary approach and scale. ‘Security’ agencies fail – scrutiny of the  general population is tightened. There are no ‘terrorists’ captured by the ‘security agencies’ so far – hence, massive and humiliating searches and interrogations of the general population increase. Everybody is a suspect, and remains so – the ‘security checks’ are performed again and again, to the point that even passengers from arriving planes go through checkpoints (already in place in USA in 2008 and contrary to reason – after all, one cannot board a plane without permission from ‘security’, so what could be the ‘danger’ at landing?) Recording takes place and undoubtedly is preserved – otherwise it is pointless. Mistakes are stubbornly preserved (there are people mistakenly placed on ‘no flight lists’ – contrary to evidence of innocence provided, they remain prohibited from flying. A name misspelled by an official leads to enormous and constant troubles for the unlucky individual.) The gates at the airport are really the gates of concentration camp already: gathered information, even suspicion without proof, goes beyond the airport. It is not at all an isolated procedure related only to airborne terrorism – the search goes for violations of intellectual property (increasingly corporative property, and not simple author’s copy rights), pornography and hate crimes (which are almost never aimed at or displayed at airports and aircrafts), political opinions (from supposed Nazis to those supposedly opposing Olympic games or deforestation.) Investigation of such ‘criminals’ does not end at the airports – it continues in their daily life with surveillance, arrests, interrogations, and sentencing. At the end, nothing is enough… short of medical manipulation, nobody can say what is on somebody else’s mind and because of that guessing, insinuations, and judging by appearance are employed as reliable and reasonable way of ‘uncovering’ potential threats (‘you look Jewish to me’ is modified to ‘you look unhappy to me’ – enough reason for suspicion, interrogation , possible arrest, and only temporary release. You are deemed a threat.) Protesting only increases your threatening potentiality – one must assist and help ‘security’ people, who, unlike you, are not to be identified (for reasons of ‘security and safety’ of the scrutinizers, they are anonymous. No names). These organs are extraordinary, with extra powers, and above the ordinary law. They are even physically positioned in ‘no man land’ – at the gray areas where national and international laws compete and none entirely applies.

            Meantime the society is placed on a diet of fear – ‘terrorist’ – ‘security’ – terrorist’ – ‘safety’ – ‘terrorists’ – ‘security’. Fed by fear, nobody even asks ‘Wait a minute! How is that searching me is saving me from terrorists? How is that my bottle of water is a ‘weapon’, but Abdulmutallab ended with his real explosives on the plane? How is opening a dossier on me a ‘safety measure’, when intelligence  about Abdulmutallab led to no action?’ CSIS, the Canadian Secret Service agency, is building massive electronic data base about ordinary citizens, which is to be shared with USA. Personal data about millions! Millions of terrorists, must be assumed, for otherwise what is the point? Scrutiny goes beyond borders – this is something the old Totalitarian states were never able to do: to terrorize the whole world. Now it is not only possible – it is done. Even transit passengers, changing planes at US airports without entering the country, may be fingerprinted: the ultimate informational source. And fingerprints are never ‘momentary’ – they are kept traditionally, which means opening a dossier. Dossiers of foreigners, not even having anything to do with USA, not even wishing to visit… Stalin and Hitler can’t even compete with this… Same names, similar names, wrongly spelled names, just names – everybody is a suspect and without himself suspecting anything, he may be subjected to surveillance, accusations, arrests, prohibitions… to further scrutiny in any case. No innocence anymore, just temporary lack of evidence, temporary leaving a person free until finally caught. Caught of doing what? Doesn’t really matter: if one is ‘caught’, even wrongly, it is good news for the propaganda of fear – one caught is registering better than one acquitted in the mass mind. So get ready for vigilance, watch with suspicion your fellow travelers – this one may be a pornographer, he is a male, so… potentially, a pornographer… do report him. Oh, they arrest him! Now I feel safe and secure – nothing makes me feel more safe and secure than seeing somebody else arrested! Old Germany and USSR were like that… and we are the same already. Massive agreement that ‘security measures’ are needed – ‘whatever keeps us safe’. Not the blatant invasion of sacred privacy and annihilation of rights and freedoms is annoying and considered dangerous, but small things are: ‘the notion that little Tiffany needs to be viewed naked by the nice man… is outrageous’! The  man  viewing … the assumption is petty and limited, in line with the aim of prescribed fear of wide-profiled predators – man=predator. Save the children! Increase the security agencies. The real question is what will happen to the information gathered about little Tiffany and everybody else! For ‘whatever it takes’ opens the doors of massive intrusion and one-sided, unjustified and arbitrary oppression and worse – ‘whatever it takes’ includes incarceration, cancellation of citizen rights, murder… scramble some eggs… may be one day a real criminal will be  caught too. No need even to hunt down on the streets – millions come on their own to the airports, voluntary captives. Spread your legs! Hands up! Strip! It is coming: everybody naked, possessions taken, some allowed on the airplane with temporary ‘uniforms’, none without a dossier. Terrorism indeed, but the terror comes from the state – it is openly against you, it is your enemy! A very real one. Not hidden at all. Aiming at you. And you applaud and ask for more… and if so, you deserve your concentration camp. Broken eggs include you, for you are nothing more than ingredient for omelette. ‘Nothing bad ever happens to good innocent people’ – remember that the same mumbled millions of Germans and Soviets. Even when found themselves in the death camps. Even when denouncing others, pushing them to death camps. Even when living in fear – but what else could be expected from people on a diet of fear… addicts, asking for more… scrambled minds make perfect omelette. ‘I don’t mind showing my private parts for safety’… scrambled already. Scrambled mind – scrambled message – scramble more of him, for is it not someone ready to display ‘private parts’ already a sex predator, a terrorist in a sense? Why don’t arrest him, for his own ‘safety’? And for the ‘safety’ of  Tiffany? And for the general public ‘safety’? And for ‘security agencies’ safety… he is willing anyway!

            Terror is built by terrorist minds – now we have once again the terrorist state. Giving us plenty of terror. And if we do not revolt against this kind of state, the future is totalitarian. Of course, it will be different from the old primitive Commie and Nazi models – this time there is no need for building concentration camps and arresting people on the streets: the whole planet is to be the concentration camp. The gates to the future are at the airports today, just a humble beginning, but very effective – we go there on our own and get the brand of the criminal. Once a criminal, forever a criminal, so what is the point of wasting money  on prisons: once the society is deemed criminal as a whole, the whole planet becomes a concentration camp. Just regulate it, place guards, kill somebody here, someone there, and keep the rest in fear and terror.