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Given
the current reign of King Jingo, they'd probably claim they thought you had C-4
in the canisters. Maximum paranoia without engaging the
brain.
While
living in Italy about 20 years ago, I had to come back to the States for my
father's funeral. Due to the short notice of my travels, I was unable to get my
"normal" Milan - Frankfort - Chicago flight arrangement. I had to go Milan
- Stuttgart - Frankfort - New York and then pogo-hop across the US. The
normal Frankfort stop was foreign-in foreign-out, so I didn't go thru customs.
Stuttgart to Frankfort meant I had to go thru customs and security a couple
extra times. My fractured babble --part German - part Italian - part
English -- to get a hand inspection on my film attracted the attention of the
Olive-drab uniform, with an Uzi.
They
X-Rayed my film!
I
don't understand why I can't carry my little Swiss Army knife, or fingernail
clippers, but there's no problem with a handfull of 7-inch wooden daggars, more
commonly called #2 pencils!
Or the
6" ball-point pen. The cell-phone could trigger something in the cargo; so
could many PDAs, palm-tops or laptops.
The
only way they can truely get rid of hazardous carry-ons is to give everyone a
powerful laxative, wait till it does its thing, and make averyone fly in paper
hospital gowns, with no carry-on. Most anything else can be a weapon if
you want it to be and don't care about your own survival.
When
honest people are sufficiently inconvenienced, they will have a satisfactorily
false sense of security. The bad-guys won't pay any attention to any of
it.
Rich
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