The world is terror-stricken. A condition of advanced paranoia is spreading everywhere. The fastest growing business in country after country is the security business. If you travel at all frequently you get a hint of this as at proliferating check-points you are made to cast off belts and shoes and no doubt explosive water bottles and colognes and anything suspiciously sharp-edged while increasingly invasive machines seek to discover the contents of your luggage and examine the secrets of your person if not yet quite your soul though no doubt that too will come. The big brothers watching us are getting bigger and more bullying.
Democracy used to be associated with freedom from the rigours of security checks and the oppressive demands of powerful and pervasive investigative bureaucracies. No longer so. The democracies of the world are rapidly succumbing to the paranoia that once was associated with dictatorships and iron-clad authoritarian regimes. The apparatuses of preemptive surveillance and interdiction are being institutionalized in even the most hallowed halls of freedom.
