Notes from the Road» Travel

A Foundation for Peace

tim — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:39:00 +0000

I was in Brittany last week at a wedding (a wonderful experience in itself!), and I met a person who leads a foundation focussing on teaching and promoting peace with children. The website is http://www.graines-de-paix.org, and it’s a multi-lingual site.
If you’re interested in working with children to promote peace, this is a good place to start. It’s mostly in French, but there’s some interesting material and it’s worth a look. They are interested in setting up contacts with persons and groups in Britain. For more info, contact Delia Mamon at delia.mamon@graines-de-paix.org.

Safely home again

tim — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 15:21:00 +0000

We came in from San Francisco without event. The security here was a little tougher than we’d seen at Heathrow – our carry on bags were briefly searched at the gate right before we climbed on the plane.

Travel restrictions not as severe as the media portrays

tim — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 19:36:00 +0000

We travelled to the US a few days after the height of the crisis – they had just allowed one small carry-on bag.In fact to my surprise the security process was no more onerous than usual – we were never searched, and the only change was the additional question (and restriction) related to liquids.We made it to the airport with 3 hours to spare and ended up with a lot of time to waste in the departure lounge.

It’s hard to judge if there were additional checks that we didn’t see, but my experience of the trip was no material difference from normal international travel.

We’ll see how it is on the way back…

How to travel safely by air

tim — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 11:05:00 +0000

During the late 1980s, I was working for Schlumberger in Cambridge, and they gave us training in how to behave in a world where terrorism was a risk. I thought I’d pass on the elements that I remember. This was the era of hi-jacking, when we had to worry both about bombs and about being taken hostage when travelling by air.So here are some of the points I remember:

Be on the lookout for luggage without an owner. If you see a bag that looks abandoned, move well away from it and report it.
Avoid areas with large sheets of plate glass. If a bomb goes off, you’re at greater risk if you’re close to glass flying around.
Avoid crowds – if there’s a suicide bomber, they might well look for a crowd in order to maximize the damage they do. This is pretty difficult with the sorts of check-in lines we see at Heathrow at present!
Don’t carry anything with you that will call the attention of a terrorist to you – anything anti-Islamic obviously, and also we were told that anything that might be classified as pornographic will be an added risk.

I’m sure there was more. But certainly there are many interesting commentators about airline security – here’s one.

We decided to delay our travel

tim — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 08:24:00 +0000

United says our flight will leave only a few minutes late, but we decided to stay home until we know more. We may travel next week, or perhaps just I will go – it depends on what we can get and our assessment of the risks.In reality it’s unlikely that anything untoward will happen. The controls are very strict, and in any case the chances of being on an affected flight are very small. How should one look at these risks?

My view is that we have to keep travelling. Not out of any particular sense of defiance, but just because life is always surrounded by risks, and one cannot realistically assess the scale of those risks. We know that historically air travel is very safe – much safer than travel by road. We also know that there is a high level of alert and careful scrutiny of travellers and their bags. We also know that there are always creative people who can figure out ways around security. So we avoid times of greatest risk, and pay attention to ourselves and our surroundings.

UK – US travel threatened

tim — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 10:36:00 +0000

Today we see headlines about the foiling of a terrorist plot to blow up planes flying from the UK to the US. This resonates with me as I’m supposed to make that trip tomorrow. I will probably delay my flight – both to minimize risk and to avoid the hassle of extra security.One of the key elements of the heightened security is the banning of carry on luggage – down to elements like spectacle cases. It’s obvious that there are many ways for a suicide-bent terrorist to create something poisonous or damaging from apparently innocuous carry-on items, so these restrictions are not surprising. But they do make travel very unpleasant for all of us.I think there’s a fundamental point being missed in this “war on terrorism”. So far as I know, no country or power has every definitively won a war against a guerilla force. These forces are characterized by:

Idealogical absolutism
Deep anger
Decentralization

Points 1 and 2 mean that damage you do that doesn’t completely destroy them makes them stronger and more extreme. Point 3 means you can’t completely destroy them.

There is therefore only one way to deal with this kind of threat – remove their need to fight. In the end, wars mostly end because the cost is perceived to be too great to continue relative to the potential benefits. Vietnam was clearly like this.

The only solution, and it will take time, is to shift funds from weapons to aid. Gradually build up a culture of trust and openness and demonstrate the benefits of cooperation rather than collision. I propose a policy for the British and American governments: over a three year period transfer the budgets for defence activities outside the UK and US respectively to aid. Imagine how much good could be done by providing medical aid and education to the countries that need it.

Travelling in Africa

tim — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:52:00 +0000

We just came back from a trip to Kenya and Tanzania (Zanzibar). Lots to say about that – and I’ll publish a lot of it on my web site – in fact the pictures are there already and accessible from the front page…But the point of this blog is that we made a mistake. We tried to save money by going through Dubai. Nothing wrong with Dubai – in fact the airport is large, modern, efficient, and full of shops that never close. The problem was the connections. We had long layovers – six to eight hours – between two fairly long flights. Painful with two kids – although they did really well and we all got a bit of sleep.So next time, we’ll pay a bit more and go as direct as possible. Less wear and tear on all of us, and a better start and finish to an otherwise great holiday.

A blog about our place in the world

tim — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:37:00 +0000

I can’t help being a bit philosophical. Life has given me so many experiences and so much diversity. I wish more than anything else for people to better understand each other, so that we can have peace.
I know it’s a dream, but why not? As one of my ex-colleagues pointed out, in order for dreams to come true, you have to wake up! So dreams are good, but action is better. This is a small kind of action – using words to influence.