Of course not. But are the recent measures safer? Do shoe-removals and liquidness remove the threats? Hardly.

If the recent move by Britain and the US (among others) to step up ‘security’ against specific threats were worth piss in a fire, they would have instituted them long before now. The threat is not a new threat. The existence of liquid or gel explosives is not a new threat. The fact that a plot was apparently thwarted against a specific attack does not make the issue new or the ‘solution’ novel.

What we are seeing is a PR move. This is all to help an industry. An attempt to maintain the public’s confidence in air travel.

The real solution will cost a lot more money, and won’t help the extant leaders maintain their thinly veiled records on terrorism and innovative policies.

It’s a shame that their facade holds even now. Bush failed to prevent terrorism, and yet he’s seen as being strong against it. Blair failed too.

I’m a strong advocate for mass transit systems. People tell me, “well trains won’t work here I live in the middle of nowhere,” or talk about how trains are just as viable of terrorist targets as planes.

They discount the idea that new ideas might crop up if we actually invest in the research. That we could invent ways to reduce crime, make policing easier, reduce threats, increase efficiency, build a stronger economy, et al. in a single swoop of action.

There’s not a state in the Union that evermore dares to try to be the city upon the hill. There is not a state, or a city, that has charged itself with a radical overhaul and the journey into the unknown to find and prove by the steel of their own resolve a new way of life. That’s the way that others will change, when they see someone else change first. It doesn’t have to be perfect, only more perfect.

But it can’t be leadership as usual. No one has all the answers, and yet the politicians will pretend they do. Rather than a leader who will say, “things are great and they’re gonna stay that way,” we need leaders who say, “I’m here to try something else, and if it doesn’t work I will be the first to admit it, and the first to work on a different idea.”

It hasn’t happened for a couple of centuries now, but that doesn’t mean it can’t.

To hell with tradition, lest that tradition be innovation.