Security check: Are you kidding me?

Hotel checks, Shopping Mall checks, airports and their nail clippers bans. How pointless and annoying they are. Are Americans to blame?

In the Philippines, every time you go into a shopping mall, a commercial building, a hotel or any similar place, a security guard will ask you to open your bad for checking. They all have this wooden stick they use to move things around a bit in your bag while they take a peak. It's the same everywhere. They are usually polite, unless of course you are rude to them. In hotels, approaching cars are required to open their trunks and mirrors are used to check underneath the car.

It works just the same in Indonesia. My car approaches the hotel security gate, the guard opens the door, says good evening while pointing his flash light to the car floor and than proceeds on checking under the car with his mirrors. After the gate, at the main entrance, another guard will greet me and use a hand held metal detector to scan my backpack.

Strict security so we are all safe. Good, huh? Hmmm... Not exactly. That stupid metal detector is definitely off. It has to be! My back pack is filled with cables, wires, PCMCIA cards, hard disks and other computer parts plus the laptop itself. How come it never triggers the stupid thing and it never beeps?

And are the guards trained in recognizing all different kinds of explosive devices that can be attached to the floor of a car? Do they really know what they are looking for? Can they spot it within the 30 seconds they take to examine the car with their small mirrors?

How come they open the trunk but never the bags in it? If I were a terrorist carrying a bomb would I be so stupid to leave it in the open, exposed o everyone could see it? Do terrorists put signs on their bombs saying "This is a bomb: Do not touch!"?

And what are those guys at the malls looking for in women's purses and/or my bags? Probably those ACME explosives we see in Road Runner cartoons. Big dynamite packs with a analogue clock attached to it, right? It has to be. After all, real explosives could be stored in small cigarette packages that they never check. Mission Impossible 1 & 2, Triple X and all James Bond series teach us that a small piece of C4 - plastic explosive - can be detonated with a 1.5 volt battery and knock down an entire building. Pretty much damage for such a little thing. It is so small it could be concealed in a wrist watch and use the watch itself as a detonator.

In airports, security is taken seriously when you are checking in bags and stuff. That is good. I do not mind that at all. But after the World Trade Centre attack in USA - you know, the 911 thing - sometimes security staff really cross the line of tough security and start being seriously ridiculous.

C'mon, man! How much damage can one do with a nail clipper?! "Mr. Pilot, I am warning you!!! If you don't change the course of this plane right now I will be forced to manicure all the passengers!!!"

I am no expert but aren't there two types off terrorists? The skilled ones and the dumb farts? Like, the dumb farts are those brain damaged that someone else manages to convince strapping a bomb to the chest and blowing it up in the middle of a crowd is going to guarantee them something, be it a happy after life in paradise (sitting to the right side of the Lord - which by the way should be a very crowded place since no one wants to sit by his left side) or comfort to the surviving family (as if they could check and make sure - you're gonna be dead, mate!). These are just as harmful as the devices they carry.

Now, the skilled ones... Ooooh, those are mean SOBs!!! They were trained. They know what they are doing. They know combat techniques, they have fighting abilities, they can endure pain and will stop for nothing. They are indeed killing machines. Trained specifically for that. Killing. Like Green Barrettes, Navy Seals... Oops! Did I mention only American special forces? I am so sorry...

Anyway, these guys do not need a nail clipper to be armed and dangerous. They are armed and dangerous even if stripped naked. They will create havoc and damage with whatever is available. Even if it is some poor guy's dead body! Do you really think they care if you take their nasal hair trimmer away from them???

"Oh, Geez... The mission failed, they found my small emery board!"

Yeah, right! I am yet to find out how those hijackers from the 911 incident got in the plane so heavily armed. Some say it was not an external job but rather a way to boost a sufferering economy. Money talks, you know. Loud, we should add.

There is this German politician who was dismissed from his post because he really believed it was all orchestrated by the USA government itself, though they never expected it to get to such a huge proportion (Oops! Bad planning!). He even wrote a book about it. Who can you trust? I don’t know...