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December 10, 2005
Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

When Will the TSA Go Away?

     A few nights ago, in the Bethel airport, my dog pooped in her kennel.

    A tall, heavy TSA agent was sympathetic to her condition. He showed me a photo of his dog, a Great Pyrenees, standing with the support of woman. The white, fluffy dog towered over her.

     Following protocol, the man stood over me as I used napkins to wipe the gooey mess from the cage. Then he followed me outside so I could let my dog find relief. The TSA man stood silhouetted at the door watching us shuffle through drifting, driving snow and a biting wind. I felt like a pop star being looked after by a nervous bodyguard. Should I run and hide in the shadows?

     Without saying it, everyone knows that forcing people through a security checkpoint in Bethel is absurd. I’m sure folks feel the same way in other rural communities where Bush’s government has taken “terrorist” paranoia too far.

     “Fer Christ sake!” I can hear—especially from those conservatives—cry, “This is government regulation at its worst!”

     On top of that, we all know that “Homeland Security” is little more than a charade.

     I know it’s not working because I discovered I had accidentally left an Xacto knife (much more lethal than a box knife) in my computer bag that went undetected by two security checks.

     Still, people line up, somberly take their shoes off, raise their arms without protest, and don’t appear upset when TSA personnel confiscate their bike tools.

     Despite our misgivings on the illogic of it all, the hysteria that has gripped America, exacerbated by Bush’s terrorism propaganda, has us standing naked as the fabled emperor.

     We were recently greeted with the news that in Miami a hysterical Homeland Security marshal gunned down a man afflicted with a mental illness because the man “indicated” he had a bomb. The man’s wife, according to a passenger, called out “My husband! My husband!” and shouted his condition, the Associated Press reported.

     (For another tragic story of impulsive overreaction, the film Niagara, Niagara does a nice job. In the movie, a young woman with Tourette’s Syndrome confronts a society hysterically normal.)

     We all know what’s behind all this hysteria. We all seem to accept it.

     A friend told me that in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, giant billboards warn ferry passengers of the national threat level. Four decades ago, school children practiced crawling beneath their desks to save themselves from a nuclear attack.

     The “homeland security” routine is just another senseless act; one that has people performing silly stunts while pretending their country is surrounded by enemies.

     A man in a restaurant in Bellingham told me TSA detained him for several hours. His crime? He wore a t-shirt with the photos of four Native American chiefs. Above the warriors it read “Homeland Security,” and below, “Fighting Terrorism since 1492.”

     Now for the haiku:

cleaning the dog shit
under the cover
of Homeland Security










Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com.
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

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in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.