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Flying free but don't question authority!

By Melody Kemp - posted Thursday, 17 May 2007


Peter Day, a BBC journalist, asserts that consumers of the not too distant future will be issued biological monitors which measure their pulse rate. The quality of services will be evaluated against whether or not the service increases ones heart rate and thereby health risk. He said that air travel is now the most heart rate raising activity we regularly indulge in.

So how does the risk of being blown out of the sky compare to the risk of a coronary over your Gloria Jeans coffee at Sydney airport?

If one wanted to cause havoc, a simple, easy-to-buy-from-a-black-marketeer-in-a-variety-of-seedy-third-world-hotels, surface to air missile would do the trick … or maybe a much cheaper plastic chopstick. Or better still, copy the oldest terrorist ploy in the world, used by the Zionist group Irgun. They blew up the King David Hotel killing 91 and then elect the terrorist instigator Menachim Begin to the post of Prime Minister of Israel.

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Last year Benyimin Netanyahu commemorated the event, thereby showing the world that that form of terrorism is really groovy, and needs to be remembered. Then there are the Tamil Tigers who now have their own navy, and by all accounts air-force: but they only kill other brown folk, so we don’t worry about them.

In the old days, the type of nationalist and corporatist state that we have in Australia, with its lashings of social control, was called fascism. Now it’s called security and it hopes we have poor memories. I hate bendy plastic cutlery that makes me feel like I am in a sheltered workshop. I am bored by the stern fathers in suits who tell us they are keeping us safe, while waging war and inciting hate. I had a father of my own and he played jazz. Much better.

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About the Author

Melody Kemp is a freelance writer in Asia who worked in labour and development for many years and is a member of the Society for Environmental Journalism (US). She now lives in South-East Asia. You can contact Melody by email at musi@ecoasia.biz.

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