Terror: ‘f***ing calm down’ and carry on | spiked

Terror: ‘f***ing calm down’ and carry on | spiked: "First they came for our shoes. Then they came for our bottles of water, medicine and mascara. Now they come for our printer ink cartridges. What will the UK and Western authorities target next in their ludicrous war on terror at the airports?
The pseudo-security measures that are now hastily imposed on air travel as a reaction to each terror alert bring to mind the generals who pinned their hopes for protecting France from invasion by Nazi Germany on the old static defence system of the Maginot line, constructed after the First World War. By the time of the Second World War, the new mobile German army simply deployed its blitzkrieg tactics to go around the Maginot’s dusty defences and waltz into Paris.
The security authorities today are not, of course, facing an enemy comparable to the Nazis. But like those generals of yore, they are always fighting the last battle, engaging in a fantasy war rather than facing reality. Thus they impose one knee-jerk ban or restriction after another, in a futile effort to prevent the attack or plot that has already happened – and probably already failed. The only effect of these retrospective security measures is to cause the air transport system to seize up even further, and to reinforce the politics of fear and paralysis."