I woke up this morning to find the sun shining, the birds twittering, the Nile shimmering and the coffee gurgling. In other words, all was right in my personal corner of this best of all possible worlds. But my sense of well being turned out to be fleeting. Still munching the last remnants of a sinful Danish pastry I turned on the computer and headed over to the Guardian where I quickly became a victim of air rage. There at the top of its home page was the headline, “Bush orders clampdown on flights to the US”.
My initial reaction was, “Who cares!” Given the predisposition of the current White House to wage unnecessary wars and threaten sovereign countries to do its bidding, I would have to be dragged kicking and screaming to that country; at least until such time as there’s an acceptable shift change. Not even a free seat in first class with a weekend on Donald Trump’s yacht thrown in could tempt me.
Nevertheless, I settled down to read the article from a purely academic viewpoint while struggling to keep the cat from its daily stroll across the keyboard.
The opening paragraph read: “The US administration is pressing the 27 governments of the European Union to sign up for a range of new security measures for trans-Atlantic travel, including allowing armed guards on all flights from Europe to America by US airlines.” But it wasn’t that which caused my blood pressure to skyrocket.
They can turn their planes into mini versions of Alcatraz for all I care, although I do admit experiencing a twinge of sympathy for some of my American friends for whom airline and airport security has become the bane of their traveling existence. What next? When will they decide to shackle passengers to their seats in the name of security?
But my admittedly selfish “I’m alright Jack” sentiments were soon to evaporate. “EU states would also need to supply personal data on all air passengers overflying but not landing in the US in order to gain or retain rights of visa-free travel to America,” read the article. Eh!
The sycophantic EU has apparently been advance-feeding American authorities with 19 snippets of personal information about every passenger flying from Europe to the US for months, and now it’s being asked to snitch on travelers winging their way to Central America or the Caribbean with no thought of setting foot in the US.
Bang goes my vacation plans this summer. As a Welsh-born Briton currently residing in Egypt, looking to bask in Barbados my personal details are no business of Washington’s. And by the way this data supply — which includes special dietary requests indicating a person’s religious beliefs — isn’t reciprocal. It’s a one-way street on the lines of Britain’s fast-track extradition treaty with the US whereby Britons wanted by the US are shipped out upon the flimsiest of evidence, even those suspected of white collar crimes.
It’s true that the Association of European Airlines (AEA) has complained that the request concerning overflying passengers has no legal foundation, but with the Czech Republic and Greece champing at the bit to prostrate themselves on the altar of Washington’s diktats in return for visa-free travel, what’s the betting the AEA will eventually cave in?
It gets worse. “Washington is also asking European airlines to provide personal data on nontravelers — for example family members — who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help elderly, young or ill passengers to board aircraft flying to America...” Just imagine. Your details could end up being circulated across the Atlantic and stored until 2030 even though you may never have left your own country.
This translates to your being considered a potential terrorist just for pushing your ailing granny’s wheelchair across a red line. The airlines have described this request as “absurd”. I might use stronger terms if this wasn’t a family newspaper.
George Bush’s America has to be the most self-centered nation on the planet. I watched the president on Fox News (where else?) last night saying he would do just about anything to keep Americans safe in response to questions about waterboarding and wire-tapping.
“I don’t think we ought to extend the same protections to terrorists overseas who want to kill us that we provide our own citizens when it comes to surveillance matters,” he said.
Many Americans might consider those arguments sound while from the point of view of non-Americans they smack of a “them and us” philosophy. The Bush administration obviously perceives all foreigners as potential enemies. So if that’s the game, if that’s the standard, it should be adopted by all countries.
Every nation should put the welfare of its own citizens first and quit pandering to the egocentric, self-serving twittering of Washington, which cares little for the rest of us as evidenced by its refusal to sign up to Kyoto, the ban on landmines and even the International Criminal Court.
If Brussels doesn’t say “non” to this latest madness on a matter of principle then it is fated to go down in history as a feeble union of US client states masquerading as a world power.
The usual suspects will say, “I don’t mind giving out information. I’ve got nothing to hide”. Get a backbone my friends. In the same way you wouldn’t disclose your salary to a perfect stranger in the street, why should you share intimate details of your life with a bunch of nameless, faceless foreign nosy parkers.
Like you, I’ve got nothing to hide but I cherish my right to privacy and that’s why I’ll be heading eastward this summer, hopefully to a place where a nail file isn’t considered a deadly weapon, a pot of face cream a potential goodness only knows what, and where a semblance of sanity still reigns.
