Friday, May 07, 2010

Scanned by X-rays

Is it here! Finally, we are safe! It’s the body-scan machine at the airports. These new machines (totally Total Recall shit), now ready to use in different airports around the world, can scan every person to they-oops-blue rays private parts. Yep, no more bombs hidden in the, well, hidden parts (not so much now…should we call them the ex-hidden parts?). That, of course, in addition to the “cease and desist” of more knives, toothpaste, creams, water, medicines, perfume…and all those threats that people usually want to take with them when traveling, which we have been experimenting already since the “War Against Terror”, or should I say “War Against a Resolution”? (Maybe the “War of the Energizer Bunny”?…it keeps going and going and going….and going!) So in addition to the persecution that we have suffered since 9-11 as citizens, now, finally, we also have the machine! Oh the wonders of science, the thing can strip us down, without any touching! For many people, the idea of no touching summarizes it all. At the end of the day, you don’t want some random guy to be doing that, won’t you? At least not without any foreplay first! So the new machines can strip you with a look-mom-no-hands! modus operandi. If you ask me, the whole idea of strip me down implies touching, but hey, that’s just me.

However, according to Jon Hilkevitch of Chicago Tribune (March 15, 2010), I got it all wrong: it is better for them to not touch you and have you all naky in X-ray (sorry, no Technicolor). We will be safer and the people watching the scan won’t even be there (they will be watching in a dark chamber and they are not allowed to go outside until you are already gone from the area). So, according to Mr. Hilkevitch, all is good, all is alright; we are just making another step into the future and a better use of technology in “the land of the free”. But who, you may ask, is this Jon Hilkevitch? Well, he is the objective reporter who wrote about the use of this machine in the O’Hare Airport. According to him, this machine is a dream came true. Again, who in their right mind would object this? Maybe some of those whiny liberals who complaint about progress. But neo-hippies always has an issue, don’t they? We have to underline what is at stake here according to Chicago Tribune: without any touch, they will know what is it that we hide underneath our clothes, from a gun to out over-weight little sins. If the latter…damn that fucking hot-dog I just ate! If the former, well, oh how grateful we must feel for invading our private space via X-RAYS. All in the name of freedom and our tea-party-bangers fathers. Oh, that’s right, I am being unfair again. Let’s go back to the “objective” news then…and it is that the people scanning these machines will never see your face because they will be in a room and cannot go outside until each and every person that they saw scanned are on their way to the planes. They also can’t see details, because it is just a X-ray picture after all, so they cannot even send those to the internet! Haven forbids there’s something wrong on the scan they will search and touch every corner of you anyways, but hey, if you are a goody-goody that won’t happen, you don’t have anything to hide and at the end of the day…safe…we are all going to be safe.

Ah, safety, such a neat word, isn’t? We have allowed so many things to let go in the name of safety….from what we carry on flights to our own houses, filling them with security guards, walls, locks and bars. Seems like everyday the average citizen is treated more and more as a criminal. In the name of safety, we have been manipulated with fear, and in some point we defined freedom as it’s opposite, because at the end of the day, these are all “sacrifices” we have to do in the name of freedom. And with that sense of feeling safe and to defend our freedom we should applaud the new machine, no? After all, according to the reporter, we still have the choice to object and be subjected then to the messy touch of the search strip. But, first of all, why do we need to be subjected to any search at all? We keep enduring all these “inconveniences” while the real terrorists still get on the plane and Osama-whatever-his-name-was still on the run. So why do I need to choose between someone touching me with latex gloves or being stripped down by X-rays? Both forms are an invasion to my privacy as a private citizen, specially when they are done “randomly”. We all know the meaning of that: every person with a turban will be “randomly” chosen, a black man would “randomly” chosen, and of course me, the brown skin with an Arab look (specially if I don’t shave that day). Second, our choice of choosing our favorite strip is bull-shit. I was there Mr. Hilkevitch, in the Durham Airport, where they “randomly” chose me for a complete search (I didn’t shave that day). No questions asked they put me on the machine, told me I was going to be X-rayed, to take everything out of my pockets, to leave my hands up in the air (what the fuck? I am definitely shaving next time!), to move to the other direction, and finally to wait near the guard while the people in the dark chambers gave the green light. Of course, they did, but right there, at that moment, I felt totally powerless, subjected to this invisible force without being able to defend myself, not even of talking, just putting my hands in the air, like a criminal. In other words, psychologically raped…one of the worse feelings I remember ever. After that I thought to myself, how is it that people accepts this intromission? How much are we willing to compromise without any questioning, without protesting? How castrated have we become that all around the world we accept more and more punitive methods against our regular lives? We have been brainwashed to accept losing our rights for the sake of protecting ourselves against an invisible other, and it is because of that invisibility, that we are have made to belief we always need more and more to be “safe”…God knows what that monstrous other looks like so everybody is a suspect. Whatever happened to “presumed innocent unless proven otherwise”?

So it is here. And apparently no one cares. All I hear is silence, like that silence I heard and felt while being subjected to the scanning, like the silence of our dead will to question authority and to still believe and defend our human rights. And that idea, ladies and gents, it’s even scarier than the X-Ray machine itself.

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