When the only tool you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. We all have hammers. Some of us keep them in our toolboxes. Some of us keep them in our head. Some of us live our hammers so fully, they’re the filter through which we see the world. For this latter group, the whole world is a nail.
It’s easy to get caught up in our hammers. Psychiatrists themselves get shrunk by other psychiatrists. There are a couple of reasons for that. Know thyself is a pretty good rule when your life’s work is helping other people get in touch with themselves. It also helps keep you from thinking the entire world is crazy just because the slice of it you work with every day arguably is.
Cops see perps, accountants see debits and credits, columnists see story ideas, mogul skiers see bumps, developers see opportunity on undeveloped land, lawyers see whatever they’re paid to see. The wheels go ’round and ’round.
So why is it not surprising when a security consultant sees threats, conspiracies and violence everywhere he looks?
In the biggest self-promoting, scare tactic to trail along behind — in front of — the 2010 Olympics, a security consultant has rung the alarm bells and called for an all out effort to infiltrate social activist groups lest we be overrun by organized anarchists.
Organized anarchists?
Kind of reminds me of the time a colleague, in the throes of an early Alzheimer’s moment, shouted out, “Hey, how do you spell anarchist?”
“Anyway you want,” I replied.
Organized or not, anarchists or social activists, they seem to all be violent terrorists to Thomas Quiggin. Security is his hammer and everyone who doesn’t lead a placid, Stepford-like existence seems to be his nails. And boy, are those nails ever getting their act together for the Olympics.
Not unlike Olympic athletes, who are training obsessively to best their opponents, activist groups as diverse as anti-poverty groups, native rights groups, extreme environmentalists, anti-globalization advocates and yes, even anarchists, are perfecting their “network-centric warfare” in anticipation of the world stage rolling over Vancouver and Whistler in 2010.
Network-centric warfare?
Sniff, sniff… sounds like consultant-speak to me. Not surprising for someone who can enumerate no less than 19 violent attacks in Canada to date perpetrated by Olympic protestors. Not surprising for someone who believes tagging the Olympic countdown clock in Vancouver with spray paint constitutes a violent act. And exactly what is a paint bomb? A hurled balloon full of paint?
Having set the stage for the very scary Olympics to come, Quiggin issues his call to action, action being something he believes VANOC is both too short of and too late off the mark. "Two years before, a year-and-a-half before, you shouldn't be planning, you should be doing," he said. "You should have sources in the field, you should have agents in the field."
Agents in the field?
Oh, spies, infiltrators, agents provocateurs. Maybe someone with counterterrorism training who can slip unnoticed into otherwise peaceful protest groups and teach them how to make real bombs instead of paint bombs so something can go kablooie, creating more work for security consultants, escalating the war that needn’t be.
Not that it’s any real solace but at least this time VANOC seems to be — thus far — dancing on the side of the angels. They claim to be working, openly as opposed to covertly, with groups planning to protest… at least those planning peaceful protests. Of course, the real security people and RCMP are planning to plant so many CCTV cameras around Tiny Town we’ll all be able to star in our own reality show.
Not unlike the war on drugs, the war on protestors, viewed through the lens of crackpots who seem to believe there is no such thing as peaceful protests in an orderly, secure society, is an ever-escalating one. And not unlike the war on drugs, the solution doesn’t lie in more policing, more covert infiltration, more monitoring and more oppression.
The current budget for Olympic security is $175 million bucks. Like most Olympic budgets, the security budget is more likely to get bigger than smaller as the Games draw near. Vancouver is a security nightmare. It has multiple points of entry, a largish population, waterfront, tall buildings and street people likely to scare the pants off even the Southern Baptists who swoop down to save them.
Whistler on the other hand, is a security consultant’s dream. One road in, one road out, no airstrips, no tall buildings, no street people, damn few anarchists, organized or otherwise, and an indigenous population so used to hosting large numbers of people we’re almost blasé about it. Or at least we are when security personnel don’t go all apeshit on us and run around with guns drawn and flak jackets buttoned up.
We need to find a better way, people. We need to smoke a peace pipe… literally.
Therein lies the solution to security, at least in Whistler. Just as the Olympics imposes mandatory drug testing on its athletes, the Whistler arm of the Olympics should impose mandatory drug taking on spectators. You wanna come to the events in Whistler? Then see ’em like a local — get high, stay high.
Using just a small fraction of the security budget, we could temporarily convert peace officers into pot officers, stopping traffic up and down the highway — instead of right in the village as they’ve taken to doing — and issuing everyone coming to the Olympics their mandatory drug taking kit: two joints, a BIC lighter and an Official Olympic roachclip.
Rallying around the unofficial Whistler 2010 Olympic mascot, BC Bud — described as a tall, lanky, white fella with an amazing mop of green dreadlocks — security personnel would mingle with the crowd, making sure everyone is doing their drugs, “Smoke ’em; I now you got ’em.” and replenishing supplies for anyone showing telltale signs of straightening out too early.
The benefits are manifold and obvious. British Columbia gets to highlight its second or third largest industry, one that stands to give tourism a run for its money with high gas prices and low currency value keeping Americans home in droves and looking for something to take their minds off of high gas prices and a weakened dollar. Everybody has a good time and leaves with foggy but happy memories of their time in Canada. Food sales go through the roof, “Quick, we need to airlift emergency supplies of potato chips to Whistler!” And there isn’t a speck of violence or a single paint bomb to be found.
Not to mention I get to start up a whole new consultancy practice, Security Through Stoning… with nary a rock in sight.
