My mentor of International politic
and
Politics – Alistair Cooke – tells a warning tale as concerns the Passport
definition of “Occupancy” from Letter From America – “A
Planet of Snow“…

Until I was nearing 40 I never
hesitated when I faced an official form – a passport, income tax – to write down
my occupation as “freelance
journalist”.After a time I found that
some officious official – airline counter man, an auditor – would want to have a
linguistic or legal debate over the word
“freelance”.”But doesn’t that ever
entail a written contract?” or “Could you not equally be defined as part-time
staff?” and so on and so forth.So I
dropped ever boasting about my freedom and settled for
“reporter”.

- Alistair Cooke.What does this have
to do with anything, you may justly inquire. Well, yesterday I read the story of
Jeremy
Wright’s inhuman treatment at the hands of US Border “Guards”. If you
read
the account, it would appear Jeremy did two things wrong – firstly, he
told the truth, secondly he used his genuine nice-guy persona to plead innocence
and thus used intelligence. As the newspaper cutout on my wall decrees;
“Intelligence
Failure” the LL’s punctuated in the shape of the World Trade Centre Towers.
Intelligence
Failure.