The Angry Exile: The Khan body scanner story.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Thursday, 11 February 2010

The Khan body scanner story.

As I said yesterday it might well be bullshit, and since the refutation by BAA rests on the pretty easy to verify point that the scanners don't have any means to store or print images I'm inclined to believe them. However, with mobile phone cameras being so ubiquitous (someone told me a few years ago that technically the best selling camera manufacturer in the world at the time was Nokia) I can't see the lack of printing or recording facilities on the scanner equipment itself being much of a hurdle to overcome. Presumably there are other policies and procedures that are there to prevent someone whipping out their mobile and grabbing a few pics of what's on the screen but ultimately it comes down to telling the staff not to do it and trusting that they don't. Sure, you could make them leave their phones in lockers or something but you'd need to search them to be sure they haven't smuggled in one you don't know about. Even if you did that a determined individual could probably get around it. I've seen spy cameras convincingly disguised as pens for less than this example, and preventing something that size from being smuggled in would require a more thorough search of both individual staff and the items they bring in with them. We'd move from asking who watches the watchers to wondering who searches those who search us.

Of course all this misses the point completely. I don't want to belabour the point I made yesterday but the overwhelming majority of flyers are just people with a need or desire to be somewhere else more quickly than other forms of transport can manage. As the Israelis have shown it's not necessary to scan everyone. As German TV has shown it's not always effective. And it's self evident from wandering around an airport terminal and looking at all the people staring at their third hour on the receiving end of suspicion and distrust that it's not fucking desirable.*

Stop fucking about and treating us as if we are all a threat - and worse, subjecting everyone to the same indignities as the tiny number of people you think might actually be terrorists so as to appear sensitive to racial and cultural issues - and start trying to identify the tiny number of fucknuts who really are dangerous. It's worth re-iterating how good at this the Israelis have become and how, despite all our security theatre, the religious nutters still seem to prefer playing their games with American and western carriers to El Al. You shouldn't need to be a fucking security expert to take a punt at what that means.

* People might say they support it when selected to take part in a survey and asked carefully worded questions, even when they've flown before and already know what a miserable fucking experience it's become. But I doubt many of them saw it that way when they've finally got to board their flight after hours of checks and scans and questions, and I wonder how many of them know that the Israeli model is an alternative.