I have been wrestling with this post for more than a week now, and fear I will not be able to do it justice, because the topic is so complex and so large that it might take a whole book or more to do it justice. But I really need to write this post, because this concerns our most precious human right, our Liberty.
There are overwhelming contradictions in the story about the so-called 'Underwear Bomber', with the FBI changing its story about four times about how many people were involved and arrested, and the testimony of eye-witnesses on the airplane not being widely published, certainly not in the lame-stream press. There is grave doubt that the man being held is really a bomber, he is almost certainly a ´patsy´, set up in order to make the public so frightened that they will accept the most draconian of measures to ´protect´them from whatever terror their benevolent government says will come next.
But let us suppose for a moment that the man on the airplane was really a terrorist, and that he had really planned to blow up the airplane. Obviously he had not done his research very well, or he would have known that he could not get the explosive to explode unless he had a detonation cap, which he did not possess. So all he managed to do was warm up his own genitals. Now let us suppose he had been led through the ´new´scanner which is already available at Amsterdam Airport. According to people involved in the research and development of the scanner, the new technology would not have picked up the ´bomb´because it was made of light plastic (a syringe) - so the new naked body scanner would have let him pass, and our would be bomber would have been allowed to board the plane unhampered.
Therefore it beggars belief that in response to the 'underwear bomber' governments worldwide have declared that they will now install the new 'naked body scanners' at all airports. Not only that, no sooner had they declared this, but two days later the scanners are installed at so many airports that one can only assume they were already there and were just waiting for an 'incident' to make us accept that we have to have this technology.
Now, being a nurse, I am no prude. I have seen so many naked bodies that they mostly fail to interest me at all. And this is where critics of the scanner are making a fatal mistake. They are appealing to the public´s ´prudishness´and warning them that their children and spouses will been seen by ogling airport personal with genitals marked out in full detail, which is of course true. But that is NOT the big issue. When I was a child just after the second world war, I remember seeing pictures of naked prisoners lining up to get into the gas chambers, and as a child I could not believe that they would not have been ashamed to be seen naked by other people. But again, that was not the issue. The nakedness was just a small part of the terrorisation and humiliation. What happened next, the entry into the gas chamber with your child in your arms, and the slow suffocating death by Zyklon B is what mattered. The nakedness was unimportant in comparison with the next event.
And so it is with the new naked body scans. Yes of course, we would all prefer that our naked bodies are only seen by a limited number of people, and that we can control who sees us naked. But it is not the nakedness that is at issue here, it is the CONTROL by others ´for our own good' and 'our own protection' that matters. We are giving up an essential liberty, that of being a private person and protected by our clothes, by standing in line waiting for the next event. The next event is the total mapping of our body image, so that in addition to thumb and face scans, there now is a 360 degree image of our body, which even though we all outwardly are similar, is unique to each of us. These images will be stored and labelled with our names, contrary to what has been reported in the lame stream media.
In addition, the body scanning technology is not without medical risks, some of the people involved in the development of the scanners have stated that the radiation of the scanner can actually damage the DNA structure of the person being scanned, which has grave health consequences and may lead to various types of cancer.
At the moment, apparently only about one in 10 people travelling will be made to go into the scanner, but this figure is forecast to increase to the point where all travellers will have to pass through the scanners. Why am I reminded of animals waiting to be slaughtered and of prisoners of war waiting for their 'showers'.? Wake up and smell the coffee, this is nothing to do with your protection, this is to do with making a database of everyone, storing their 360 degree body scan and adding yet another layer to Big Brother´s surveillance methods. I shall not be scanned, not because I am ashamed of my body, but because it will not protect either you or me, it may cause illness, but most of all, because I will not give up my right to liberty for a supposed safety.
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