Busy busy day

I spent the morning packing and shipping stuff from my webshop (unlike other years they haven't forgotten about me after the holidays), and being berated by a customer who didn't change his address on PayPal yet somehow I was supposed to know he moved and forward the package accordingly. I'm afraid my telepathy is not that specific.

Then a friend of mine from Bonaire asked me to edit a video script for him. It was pretty good, but needed just that little bit of help a native English speaker could provide for a native Belgian.

And now to finish up a few more things and get ready to go see Mo tonight. W00t! Everyone else should go too. Austin Grill SILVER SPRING (rather than Rockville so that dah Toy doesn't again become stupidly confused and lead the exsmof otherwise known as Designated Driver astray.

So read the wondermojz entry and get your sorry butt out to Silver Spring and see her. It's well worth it. I've heard a rumor that the Recalcitrant Child, the dogpooh and the exsmof may show up.

Ok... I don't generally post political rants here but...

I have another blog I use for my political ranting at Psycho Sensei. Yet another blog I use for my Wiccan blatherings at Non Fluffy. However, sometimes something just pisses me off to the extent that I get SO ANGRY I have to rant.

I get a lot of my daily information via RSS feeds. As I was scanning along my usual fodder today, I came across this from Boing Boing:

A five-year-old boy was taken into custody and thoroughly searched at Sea-Tac because his name is similar to a possible terrorist alias. As the Consumerist reports, "When his mother went to pick him up and hug him and comfort him during the proceedings, she was told not to touch him because he was a national security risk. They also had to frisk her again to make sure the little Dillinger hadn't passed anything dangerous weapons or materials to his mother when she hugged him."
It's a case of a mistaken identity for a 5-year-old boy from Normandy Park. He had trouble boarding a plane because someone with the same name is wanted by the federal government. Mimi Jung reports from Sea-Tac Airport.
You know, if you wanted to systematically discredit the idea of a Department of Homeland Security, if you wanted to make an utter mockery of aviation safety, you could not do a better job than this.

It's precisely this type of "by the book" inability to think for oneself bullshit that allowed what happened on 9/11 to transpire the way it did. Remember, back then box cutters were ALLOWED on flights. Nobody on duty that day questioned the idea of allowing people on one way paid with cash tickets to board an aircraft carrying deadly instruments. Nobody, except one man who later "felt bad" about it.

Michael Tuohey, of Scarborough, Maine was a US Air ticket agent that day:

"I said to myself, 'If this guy doesn't look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does.' Then I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it's not nice to say things like this," Tuohey told the Maine Sunday Telegram. "You've checked in hundreds of Arabs and Hindus and Sikhs, and you've never done that. I felt kind of embarrassed."

So he thought for himself but rejected his conclusion, maybe because he thought he might get sued, or maybe because it was easier not to question the rules. Nowhere am I saying that if this man had done something the tragedy would have been averted - we can never know. For all we know the other terrorists would have gone ahead and committed the horrible acts. But it's that kind of questioning that shouldn't be stifled, but should be encouraged.

Maybe if someone had bothered to question the stupidity of detaining a 5 year old child while perhaps someone else carried something lethal on board an aircraft, this incident and others like it would not occur.

Just maybe. Otherwise, we might as well stand up and surrender right now, for surely we have lost. Questioning authority is the cornerstone of what "they" hate most about us, and we are prohibiting our own people from doing so in any meaningful fashion. calanish asked me whether regime change would make any difference. Sadly, I don't think so. Since 9/11/01 we've been trained to be systematically afraid, to not question, and to accept whatever we were told "for our own safety."

How many more 5 year olds do we have to frisk before we get the message?