Paranoia

Yesterday I played kick the ball with my comrades in freak the Manwolf and Salacious Crumb. It was good to get out in the fresh air and get some exercise for a change, after my recent illness and return to the life of a salary man. Where we were playing was right below the flight path into Sydney International.

As someone who was once trained to shoot down aircraft, the constant stream of air traffic overhead gave me pause for thought. Watching the 737s lumber above us, I guessed that at sea level you would have at least 3 good shots with a portable surface to air missile and possibly up to 5 with a large calibre long arm.

I'm not going to dwell on what the effects of a commercial passenger jet crashing into Sydney. I'm not even going to mention that neither the old Lucas Heights nuclear reactor nor the new one are capable of withstanding that type of crash. I don't need to because we all know what would happen.

Now, I'm not one for inciting paranoia, but before the events of Madrid earlier this month, I had thought the possibility of terrorism coming home to roost here in Oz was pretty damn remote. But now I'm not so sure. After our government's support of the illegal and morally unjustifiable war in Iraq we have most definitely become a target. Why? Because we bomb their countries and lock up their refugees in concentration camps. What more justification do they need? We've certainly terrorised them more for lesser reasons.

I can't help but feeling that it's only a matter of time before our armed forces 'lose' a Carl Gustav 88mm anti-tank rocket launcher, or even a couple of 66mm SRAWs, which later turn up embedded in the side of a QANTAS long-haul flight from LA. It wouldn't be the first time our 'professional' killers have screwed up and lost weapons or in some cases, traded them for drugs.

But is there a solution? Do we become so paranoid that we end up destroying the freedoms we are supposedly trying to defend? It certainly didn't help the Spanish, who were as paranoid as anybody else, and quite frankly, it's not going to stop it happening again in the USA. Perhaps if we just stopped bombing the fuck out of countries small enough to not be able to retaliate in a conventional sense. Perhaps if we stopped looking at the rest of the world as strange dark people with funny hats and more as our brothers and sisters (or in some cases slightly estranged cousins, but you get the point). Perhaps, just perhaps, compassion and understanding are our secret weapons, which no amount of religious fundamentalism or blind adherence to dogma can combat.

Perhaps, perhaps.

Still, Salacious Crumb was able to see the bright side - "With a bit of luck the plane would be full of crap Indie bands on their way back from playing in Melbourne"