Robg. If only people in uniform remembered they are people. After the third time at Adelaide airport to be told " Sir you have been chosen?". Then go through a full search and have my cabin baggage checked for explosive residue. I asked " Is this candid camera, or do you fancy me "as the TV advert?".

For crying out loud I was going to Melbourne on a day return. And what annoys me, I am contributing to these "people" wages! yet they behave like the East German Stasi!

Yes we are being controlled and sadly they are employing Morons to keep up this farce!

Ditto from another un-Australian troublemaker, though I'm a citizen and all my family traces back to the Gold Rush.

My Southeast Asian friends chuckle at the contrast after landing at Mascot and Tullamarine. Most too are residents or nationalized, causing a mix of embarrassment and contempt at Australia's political culture.

But it's easy to see where Australian Government spin has promoted the insular paranoia, dishonesty and cowardice that make our country a regional laughing stock. They depicted the fake 'liberation' of East Timor as a bold, principled triumph. It was a scheming rip-off against two neighbors: the wretched East Timorese themselves and the Indonesians who had a joint contract over the oil and gas (and who did the West's bidding by invasion in the first place). The IMF and US prevented the intervention from becoming a war, to the extent that Canberra incurred debt to be repaid via loyalty over Iraq and ridiculous sellouts in the FTA and huge, dodgy defence contracts.

Then there was 'border protection', best symbolized when they sent the SAS to harass wretched men, women and children in the Tampa fraud, before further traumatization in costly high-tech concentration camps. Hmmm...real tough! But they pumped the Anzac myth harder still, with Howard even sticking up for drunken Gallipoli tourists, some of whom had rolled their sleeping bags on diggers' graves. Veterans I've known would answer that kind of 'leadership' with a rifle, though without dignifying the target by wasting bullets in the process.

Constituents hold some blame for going along with this farcical government and its bogus nationalism, especially when the big bribes kicked in, but the buck must stop with the leadership.

Let's not beat about the bush: these people are lying, deluded, selfish traitors of the most dangerous type. Voting them out is far too kind: we should indulge them in their nostalgia for good ol' law-n'-order and recall the death penalty, just for their trial. I'm serious: they had no qualms if Dave Hicks had got the chair.

The profound damage they've caused this country has barely even begun to be counted.

My last trip from Alice Springs started with my daughter having a tantrum over having to put her 10cm toy dog through the scanner. Then they spied a pair of nail scissors (inadvertently) left in our hand luggage. So back to the check-in counter to try and get them in the luggage. No luck, so into the bin. Back through the metal detector. BEEEEP Take off belt. BEEEEP Take off boots. BEEEEEEPPPP Try again. BEEEEEEPPP And again....Silence. Put on boots, hold up trousers and shamble towards plane. Then, EXCUSE ME SIR, please step this way.

Get tested for explosives (either that or the lady in uniform fancies my buttons) while the PA pages "Passenger Johnj" with increasing stridency. Get let out of the interview room and shamble through the departure lounge while the PA booms "FINAL BOARDING CALL FOR PASSENGER JOHNJ get your backside there now mister!!" Finally board the plane. Fortunately the cabin crew refrained from the worst of Virgin's jollity on the cabin announcements, otherwise one of them would have had to dodge a size 11 boot.

Don't know whether the experience reminded me more of Kafka or a bad Monty Python sketch. I won't be flying again soon (how much battering can the ego stand) and a bomb seems the least of my worries.

People obviously don't have much to whinge about when they make such a big deal over so little inconvenience. Times must be pretty good!

So Runner, you don't object to being treated like a criminal whenever you visit an airport?

Justice is the first principal in Sustainable Development.

This needs to come from the way we do things both inside and outside the country and the example must embrace a full understanding of what is meant by 'collective securities'.

“Collective Securities” is about being Community Safe. It is about social-economic and cultural political practices, as much as Crime Prevention.

Think Global Act Local for ALL!

Ad hoc measures on the issue of ‘securities’ have eaten into the Australian social fabric. The term "securities" has been abused by our leaders and has created a fear socially that will take years to fully understand and over come.

I will never forget the abuse of the technical data that came through the last Federal elections, side tracking national discussion by the distractions of "Air Marshal" and the "Tamper over-board" crisis. While these were important issues to flush, the blockages to learn more about our own role and the learning to take global responsibility as a "whole" was abused through the dishonest presentations and trivialisation of ‘how people were experiencing the impact of war and threats of war itself’.

We need balance. The current use of power has gone wild in Australia.

Fear within our own communities side-lined the importance of looking at the bigger picture that includes our global responsibilities to adhere to world problems. Problems facing what we need to do regarding "conflict resolutions" ‘everywhere’ especially where the displacement of people is displaced further by our focus on immigration and conflicting polices of Australia’s "skills shortages".... as the only definition of need.

Something is wrong alright, and I am hoping we wake up to ourselves in the near future.

Community Safe is a concept that must include ALL!

http://www.miacat.com/
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