Have you allowed yourself to live in a Police State?

The Terrorists and Criminals threaten our way of life. They want us to give up our freedom unless we meet their needs and demands. The free world rebels against this. What happens instead? We give up freedom and personal liberty in the name of safety. s718342343_319397_1752

Our legislators ask us to stand idly by while we allow them to make us safe. How do they make us safe? By creating laws. What do these laws do? They ask the law abiding to make sacrifices for our safety. Do these laws affect the terrorists? The Criminals? If they cared about laws they would not be terrorists or criminals in the first place.

So now, in the interests of the greater good for the greater masses, I no longer carry my nailclippers when I travel. Safe in the knowledge that no-one will ever again hijack a plane with the best damn toe-nail clipper Body Shop ever sold. Of course we do run the risk of badly groomed nails at a beach near you. Germans in white socks and sandals will become appealing. Similarly no self respecting individual will dare travel with a bottle of perfume and a whole tube of toothpaste. Are we any safer? Are “things” the danger? What do we screen things or people?

I left for the Maldives unable to do effective personal grooming and was promptly given stainless steel cutlery. Is this some bizarre satire?

Why does this happen? I’ll tell you why. Government needs to be seen to be reacting to damnable circumstances. The most noticeable reaction? Make draconian thoughtless laws fast. To hell with the personal consequences, we must be seen to be doing something! We the legislators seldom fly commercial anyway. So what.

The result, we live under Eastern European Staasie pre Berlin Wall style circumstances. I grew up in apartheid South Africa. I lived in fear of arrest. I needed to watch who I spoke to and what reading material I had lying around. Long leather coats in the middle of the night, are arrests we all live in fear of. Arrest without trial? arrest on suspicion, all fair game.

In the new, free, democratic South Africa, with one of the best Constitutions on the planet, even we, those who fought this kind of oppression, are capitulating in the name of illusions of safety. The dark forces may summarily arrest you at a roadblock for excessive speeding in your car from some time before. Draconian? Don’t even try travel with a Leatherman or mini pocketknife.

As of now Big Brother demands get to know who you are before you can even buy a pre-paid sim-card. Why? Because organised crime use them? Bullshit, this won’t help, Organized crime will get a friend to buy the card or steal a bunch of them. How will it help? I’ll tell you what it will do: increase the cost of sim-cards; increase the hassle and burden on the law abiding. Stop crime? Fat chance. Any criminal dumb enough to use a card registered to themselves in a crime is dumb enough to get caught anyhow. To stop crime we need intent. The political will to eradicate crime. Not silly laws to harass the law abiding. Not men in the dark come to arrest us.

We need to strand together and demand or civil rights and liberties. It is what we sacrificed so much for.

I want to live free. I deserve this. I am law abiding. Don’t ask me to give it up. Otherwise the terrorists have already won.