Blog of Jon Wright

Today’s news on the war on terror.

A Sky correspondent made me cringe whilst reporting on the Israeli conditions for withdrawl from Lebanon. As the Israeli Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, stressed that Israel would not withdraw its troops unless a sizeable UN force entered the region alongside the Lebanese army. Explaining that Israel wanted to avoid creating a ‘vacuum’ for Hizbollah fighters to reposition, the reporter turns to his chum and critcised Israel for not having much confidence in the Lebanese army.

Nuff said on that.

If ever the US Government needed to give the conspiracy theorists more ammunition to prove that 9/11 was a pretext for martial law and a police state, today was the day. It seems a women, armed with a jar of Vaseline, gets claustrophobic on a US bound flight from London causing F16 jets to intercept, divert the plane to Boston, where the FBI, CIA, Special Forces, tanks (ok i’m embelishing this a little) and sniffer dogs surround the plane like something out of Entebbe.

Sure it’s a sensitive time right now, but made a whole lot worse by an ‘over-reaction’ to say the least. So why did this all happen? Surely the people on board would have been aware of the situation and had it under control. I’m sure it’s a regular occurance with the amount of flights that take place these days. I mean a lot of people little get a little nervous and twitchy on long haul flights. So now the theorists will say it was all a setup!!

While Hizbollah continued rocket skirmishes into Israel, despite the ceasefire, we are reminded that Israel have broken international law by dropping cluster bombs in populated area’s. And who do we have the honour of telling us this? You guessed it, the western media aided by Hizbollah and a UN inspector thrown in for good measure. As nasty a weapon of war the cluster bomb is, it would be pretty difficult dropping them anywhere else considering Hizbollah were living and firing from civilian area’s during the conflict. Maybe Israel should try water bombs next time just to be on the safe side.

New ‘Buzzword’ of the week is “Airline Passenger Profiling”.

So what is it and why’s it suddenly come about?

Well it’s certainly not new to the Aviation industry, in fact its been around and used for over twenty years.

A quote from the sub committee of Aviation : “Since enactment of the Aviation and Transportation Security Act on November 19, 2001, the Subcommittee has held two oversight hearings on the law’s implementation. The first, on December 7, 2001 looked at the difficulties in meeting the December 31, 2002 deadline for screening all checked baggage with explosive detection equipment. The second hearing, on January 23, 2002 focused on the 60-day deadline for screening checked baggage by other approved means.

Some security experts have suggested that focusing on baggage is not the best approach. Rather, they suggest the focus should be on the person. This usually means profiling to try to determine in advance which passengers pose the greatest risk.”

Why has it suddenly flamed up again?

Well, the war on terror and the recent plots to blow up aeroplanes out of UK skies have caused the Government to have a rethink on the way British airports processes passengers before boarding a flight.

Israel uses passenger profiling and swears by it, but already were getting the usual whines from the PC brigade on how it will effect our human rights and also discriminate against ethnic minorities.

Gimme a break!! If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. I’d certainly feel safer boarding a flight knowing my fellow passengers have been thoroughly checked over…ouch!!.

In fact i was just talking about this the other week with a friend about how i’ve lost count at the amount of times i’ve been stopped when visiting Florida with my family. I might hasten to add that i’m extremely white skinned, 6.0 ft, 15.5 stone, slightly grey and a balding overweight hairy Englishman. But unlike me, none of my family, who have very tanned skins and could be easily mistaken for a being Mediterranean, have never been stopped.

It doesn’t bother me at all, in fact it makes me feel secure and raises a few laughs along the way. It’s called living in the 21st Century (remember Space 1999 or Logans run?)

So if your skin is dark in pigment and you get stopped at an airport and ‘profiled’, spare a little thought for me.

Just come back from a great camping holiday in the lake district and had time to do some reading as well as watch a movie on my iPod entitled Martial Law 9/11: Rise Of The Police State: Weapon Of Mass Enlightenment.

Watching this film made me think back to a BBC documentary about Abdul Haq, a leader of the Northern Alliance who was captured and executed by the Taliban during the fall of 2001.

The fall of 2001 being 9/11, when his constant warnings to the US Government of pending attrocities and his knowledge of the whereabouts of the elusive Bin Laden, seemed to fall on deaf ears and may have ultimately lead to his death.

After watching the BBC documentary, i remember thinking how unlucky this guy was to be caught by the Taliban at such a crucial stage. I mean, how did they know where he was? Talk about being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or so i thought!!

Now after watching Alex Jone’s documentary, i can’t help thinking his death may not be such a coincidence after all. Especially after reading on the Guardian website that an American-approved evacuation of Pakistani military officials from the besieged Afghan city of Kunduz in November 2001 “slipped out of control”, allowing al-Qaida fighters and members of the Taliban to join the exodus and leave the country.

So was he unlucky? Or did he know too much? I guess we’ll never know, but one things for sure, i’ll never look at Arnold Schwarzenegger in the same way again!!