Media BS Masterclass #23 - Setting up a couple of frosty ones

For many years the UK Gold Standard for 'chilling' imagery was this picture of Myra Hindley...


Not being old enough to recollect the Moors Murders the only thing I found immediately chilling about that photo was the choice of haircut and unflattering lighting

For the generations that did remember the murders, however, this was an extremely emotive photo and became legendary as a cheap, Pavlovian way to boost newspaper sales on a slow day, through the simple technique of fabricating the flimsiest of pretexts to stick the Hindley portrait somewhere on the front page

And, after I learned a little about the Moors Murders, I could concede that, yes, you could convince yourself that there was something intrinsically evil about Hindley's expression if you were so inclined

But, to be honest, the image itself really was no more intrinsically 'chilling' than any other crap portrait taken of a woman with a crap haircut in the mid 1960s

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Which is my roundabout way of introducing the much more contemporary issue of what is the State and its supportive media whores to do when there is fuck all in the way of video evidence that ties the alleged 7/7 bombers into the actual bombings?

Imagine that you've secured a mound of totally innocuous video of the alleged 7/7 bombers going about their daily business, no different to the mound of innocuous footage you could gather on any other citizen of these over-surveilled isles but, thanks to a series of incredibly unlikely mishaps, you have no actual, for want of a more respectful phrase, money shots

How do you attempt to convince Jane and Joe Public that the footage you are going to try and sell to them as being hard evidence of terroristic wrong-doing is not actually banal and irrelevant?

Various dodges have been tried - showing undated footage not taken on 7/7 at the same time as a voice-over talks about 7/7 is one, referring to 'iconic images' of ecstatic bombers hugging each other that don't actually exist has been another, but none have been so heavily used as the old classic...

Describe any old irrelevant toss as being 'chilling'

Don't quite get what I'm on about? Do a couple of Google searches for terms like '7/7 Bombers Chilling' or '7/7 Chilling Photographs', read a few of the results and see if any of the material described as 'chilling' is anything but irrelevant and/ or innocuous

Here's one of my personal favourites...



and a couple more chilling images...



and not forgetting this chilling footage here


as I'm sure you'll appreciate, there are plenty of other examples out there

Make no mistake, whenever you see or hear the word 'chilling' used in a news story, the person behind that story thinks that you, your mum, all your family, your friends, your neighbours, everyone you've ever cared for in this life, are all thick as pig shit and are stupid enough to be sold any old codswallop, given the right subliminal prompts

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edit: and in the context of BS news stories attempting to weave evidence of murderous intent out of the irrelevant and mundane, the first half of this Daily Mail article...

Tube bombers posed as A-Team characters in text messages just hours before 7/7 attacks

...is so ridiculous as to be surreal




I know we're talking the Daily Mail here but surely at least some of its regular readers have enough intelligence to comprehend that it is being insulted

Surely?

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Best of the Bunch

Others here

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Funny F*ckers

Seen in Stockwell Underground Station today...




The station is festooned with the things - including one placed tastefully on the platform directly opposite where JCdM was executed


edit: coincidentally, my North of England correspondent sent me this picture taken in Rochdale station today whilst I was typing this post up...

hmmm, mucho synchronisticomente

and remember, it's only subliminal if you're deaf, dumb and f**king blind

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IT'S OFFICIAL!! Mainstream Media ‘Silly Season’ now extends from January through to December

Some personally selected highlights from the characteristically level-headed, objective and fact-packed mainstream media coverage of the chilling exploits of the Bacofoil Bomber…


The Daily Mail

“Police suspect the terrorists who built the bomb, and two similar devices found at the scene, thought they would have been powerful enough to blow out the front of the restaurant - causing untold death and injury”

= an absolute classic IMHO and worth re-reading and thinking about a couple of times

“One friend, 17-year- old Alli Turner, said: 'When the Twin Towers happened he would constantly watch it on repeat.”

That would be when Bacofoil Boy was fifteen – and five years before his conversion


The Telegraph

"If it had gone up it would certainly have caused a huge fireball and the idea that this was happening in a family restaurant packed with children is awful."

AKA ‘Ah well, until the next real bomb goes off we’ll just have do the terrorists work for them by imagining and writing whatever baby-strewn carnage-scenarios we can come up with’

"Detectives believe Mr Reilly planned to commit suicide and allegedly had help in constructing three "rudimentary but viable" bombs that had never been seen in Britain before. They were constructed from sodium hydroxide, aluminium foil strips and an essential oil, combined with kerosene.”

An intriguing Americanism there - later reports/ stories have started referring to paraffin

The scent of TERROR!! - specially formulated for people who want their bombs to smell nice

The Press Association – via Yahoo

“Investigators suspect the place where Reilly tried to set off the bomb, a backroom toilet, was chosen to maximise the impact of the device and two others found nearby.”

Some loons might think that a backroom toilet would be the last place someone would choose to 'maximise the impact of the device' – but the chillingly devastating results speak for themselves


The Guardian/ Observer

“Rafiq said the grooming of vulnerable people for suicide missions was well documented in the Middle East and claimed that there had been cases of terrorist organisations hacking patient health records to identify the vulnerable.”

Would that be ‘terrorist organisations’ like this bunch?

“But there is incredulity that such tactics could possibly be employed in one of the sleepier parts of the UK. More worrying is that the threat of terrorism appears to be spreading across the UK. 'The government has been focusing on major cities, so it makes sense for extremists to move into other regions,' Rafiq said.”

A virtually infinite number of possible scenarios make sense – it doesn’t mean that they happen though.

For example, it would also make sense for terrorists to get jobs working in mainstream journalism writing hysterical speculative stories designed to scare the crap out of people.

Of course, that would be just loon talk.

Unlike speculation that highly-trained jihadists are hiding out in the Shires – that’s rational

...the almost perfect hiding place for hordes of brown-skinned terror bastards

And top marks too for all the subliminal passing references to rucksacks, the Evil Internet, travelling on buses, potential suspects slipping through poor old MI5’s under-funded fingers and other chilling parallels with 7/7 which have featured in virtually all of the articles published thus far

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Even if you were to discount any speculation of possible flaws and inconsistencies in the official narratives of 7/7, or even 9/11, the fact that our mainstream press, shamelessly stoked up by politicians and the security establishment, wets its pants in its eagerness to overstate and exaggerated the capabilities of the shadowy Legions of TERROR just screams out that the objectives of the terrorists and the establishment are exactly the fucking same

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Bin Laden didn't blow up the projects

A repost of a link to a video of Immortal Technique's 'Bin Laden' because I found myself humming it a couple of times yesterday...





Mr Technique is clearly one of those self-hating racist right-wing conspiraloons who speaks out against everything he secretly stands for and only talks about in hidden online forums

It's 'high levels of paranoia and mistrust' like this which get in the way of Real™ Democracy, Real™ Inactivism and Real™ Empowerment

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The Spring/Summer 2008 TERROR!! season officially open for business

I keep meaning to write a post about the latest bout of TERROR!! mania which is the sweeping the UK

But the problem is that there is so much going on at the moment that even someone like me, with a little more time currently on his hands than most, can’t keep up with it all

Which, I suspect, is the idea

In the space of a few days we’ve had at least three high profile terror trials start or end…

• A group of radical FantaMentolists who allegedly conspired to destroy airliners with fizzy drinks – a feat so ludicrously unfeasible you could do a lot more damage to people by forcing them to drink that crap rather than trying to make it explode
  
  

now in zingy, aspartame-enhanced H202 flavor!!

• The alleged 7/7 co-conspirators who allegedly carried out meticulous reconnaissance for the alleged 7/7 bombers. A reconnaissance mission fiendishly disguised as a day trip to several popular London tourist attractions which weren’t actually attacked on 7/7 but which looked ‘strikingly similar’ to the trains/ tunnels bombed on 7/7
  
  
  "Look! It's round! Tunnels are round..."
  
  
  
  
• Co-conspirators who assisted a plot to slaughter hundreds of London night-clubbers – foiled only by the fact that their 'bomb' was useless and the difficulties presented when trying to park a blazing Mercedes inside a night club whilst you are also on fire
  
  

...plus all sorts of supporting material slipped into the press and television schedules. The BBC, for example, is kicking off its latest expose on all things Terror this evening and the home secretary announced this weekend that there are literally thousands of bearded people under surveillance under suspicion of visiting museums, shopping for condiments or drinking cola

And when reading up on this stuff it is very easy to get bogged down in the detail and lost in a bewildering sea of foreign sounding names and alleged organisations and plots; all cross-referenced to each other in one big amorphous mass of confusing bullshit

Most people, even those sceptical of the establishment, will simply give up and conclude that there is apparently so much material that there really must be some basis to the existing War on Terror paradigm

Which, as I’ve said, I suspect to be the idea

If you do read up on this stuff it is clear that, for fair reasons or foul, MI5/MI6’s hands are all over these alleged plots in the form of various shady characters who seem to be the driving force behind many of these plots but are rarely caught. When they do occasionally get caught they’re allowed to escape, sports fisherman style, with almost comical ease

And yet, in spite of the ludicrous and dubious nature of many of the charges and allegations, all this cack is parroted uncritically by mainstream journalists

How on Earth, short of maxing out on botox, can anyone report this nonsense and actually have the brass nuts to describe it as ‘chilling’ whilst keeping a straight face baffles me completely

Though maybe I’m being a little hard on the establishment here

Imagine being a member of the security forces tasked with finding one of the half dozen or so remaining British Muslim FantaMentolists who still think that Osama bin Bogeyman...

a) Wasn't employed by the CIA
b) Isn't connected to the Bush family
c) Is still alive

Not an easy task by any means

With such restrictive criteria you'd have to be a little less selective when it comes to finding evidence which supports any actual serious capacity and intent to blow people up

Francis Walsingham - the spiritual Godfather of British Intelligence and a man whose methods and career have absolutely no relevance to events today; absolutely none... zilch... zero... nada... niente...

The 7/7 trial which started last week has already turned out to be a particularly shameful exercise in spin. There has been a lot of material relating to the 7/7 attacks released in the controlled, courtroom environment which many people, myself included, have been waiting for since the attacks happened

The curious thing is that much of this material and the interpretations of its significance being parroted by the press have nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the accused. I find it very unlikely that the defence, even if it were so inclined, will even attempt to challenge this material when it has the opportunity to do so. The defence team is going to be focused on distancing its clients from 7/7, not questioning what actually happened on that day

Which means that this trial is being used as a device to promote and publicise the official narrative in such a way that it will not be open to direct challenge or scrutiny. This prosecution has, in many ways, the air of a show trial about it. Some people might even have the cheek to claim that it will be an adequate alternative to an independent inquiry into 7/7

Today saw the most gob-smacking example of what is going down before our eyes…

“The bombers scattered identity and bank cards around the Tube carriages they targeted before placing their rucksacks on the floor and setting off the explosives inside them, jurors heard.”

" It is, in the opinion of Mr Todd, noteworthy that at each scene, some personal materials and documents, such as ID cards, were found relating to the bombers. Although they were damaged to some extent, they did not show the damage that would be expected if they were on the body of the bomber or in the rucksack, suggesting that in each case they had been deliberately separated by some distance from the actual explosion."

WTF!!?

and no-one with mainstream media access is going to comment on this?!!

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Terrorism Act 2000, Section 58, Subsections (1)-(4)

58. Collection of information.

(1) A person commits an offence if -

(a) he collects or makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or

(b) he possesses a document or record containing information of that kind.

(2) In this section “record” includes a photographic or electronic record.

(3) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that he had a reasonable excuse for his action or possession.

(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable -

(a) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years, to a fine or to both, or

(b) on summary conviction, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum or to both.


Which basically means anyone can be locked up in this country for up to ten years for the crime of possessing anything from a phone book to a DVD or even a photograph of a public building without the State having to demonstrate any criminal intent whatsoever or even any connection to people with criminal intent

Good eh?

Have you seen that episode where Murdoch and B.A. turn an ambulance into a tank using only a Swiss Army knife? A snip at only 6 months in Belmarsh

Still, as long as They only use this kind of legislation to stick it to wogs there's no harm done is there?

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Dummies pt2

A few weeks ago I was sorting through a pile of old books deciding what to keep and what to trash.

Now back when I was a wee nipper of a lad I had a perfectly normal teenaged boy’s interest in the mechanics of blowing shit up.

So fond was I of the mechanics of blowing shit up it was even one of the reasons why I did degrees in geology and geophysics; in the vague aspiration that one day they would enable me to use dynamite on a semi-regular and legal basis. I used to stay on after school with a group of like-minded boom connoisseurs and make all sorts of amusing substances and rocket-powered whatsits under the careful supervision of a friendly chemistry teacher who enjoyed nothing more than combining his twin loves of pyrotechnics and teenaged boys (but that’s another story) on his otherwise lonely Friday nights

Once a year, my and virtually every other school I knew in London, would organise a day trip to Boulogne or Calais which served absolutely no other purpose than to allow their pupils to buy and personally import satchels full of French bangers and shitty flick knives to throw at each other's faces for months afterwards...

Now that's what I'm talking about

Boy like things that go bang. We give them toy guns. We sell them violent games and movies. We take them to firework displays. When they grow up a little we recruit them into our fucking armies to make things, and people, go bang for Godssake

British teenagers honing their car bombing skills with the aid of some old Dinky toys and a box of French boomsticks - if only the hands in this video were Brown this could have easily formed the basis of a high profile terrorism trial, if only...

To cut a long story short, until a few weeks ago, I had a small pile of books, 30 year old books admittedly, sitting in my place, on the subject of making things go bang

Not any more

I slung them out

Actually, I shredded them and then slung them out

Because, the thing is, nowadays the mere possession of a provocative book, or a CD, can get you some serious time inside if the authorities decide to single you out

As with the lies that spun dummies into supporting the occupation of Iraq, there is now apparently no need to prove any malicious intent or even the capacity to manufacture or use the stuff mentioned in a book or CD. The mere ownership of media which are in themselves not necessarily illegal (or even practically usable) can be spun and used to put people away

And I’m not fucking stupid enough to think that this sort of treatment is going to be restricted solely to Brown people indefinitely

There is the small problem of me still remembering some of the stuff in those books, which I suppose means that my brain could be classified as illegal media until the day I die - but that's nothing a steady diet of aspartame-laced beverage products can't cure

And it’s not just books or CDs that can be used to bang people away. We’ve seen everything from tourist maps to camping equipment to food and kitchenware being used as ‘evidence’ to lock people up. It would seem that, in a country awash with illegal guns and drugs, that a well-funded multinational supercrime network such as Al Qaeda has decided to pass up on importing boring old AKs and Semtex and is planning to crush British civilisation with sacks of flour, copies of MS Flight Simulator and useless FBI produced terror manuals instead

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All of which is a potentially self-incriminating, 500 word long preamble to posting this blog button featuring Khalid Khaliq I received in the post yesterday…



The background to which can be found on the J7T blog here

I don’t know the guy. I don’t know if he’s a saint or a sinner but what I do know is that locking people up for owning a CD is bullshit. So even though I only usually decorate this blog with sidebuttons which feature either ironic or fishy themes I’ll make an exception and haul this one up for a while

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edit: two candidates for 'Quote of the Month' on the subject of Khalid Khaliq's imprisonment, as seen in the The Sun's readers forum of all places...

"I don't know enough about this individual man to really say anything about him in particular.

Generally, though, it is wrong to even jail someone for the possession of an Al-Qaeda manual. The only justification for jailing someone is if it can be proven that such an individual sought to use such a manual as a guide to commit a crime.

I mean think about it, I have a copy of Mein Kampf on my bookshelf. That doesn't make me a Nazi."

and, in a similar vein...

"I've got the Hobbit, but it doesn't mean I'm going to slay any dragons this week"

Yeah? Says who?

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International War on Terror News Roundup - New Zealand edition

The News Zealand press - even faster with the news that matters than the BBC

A recent story from the New Zealand Herald...


Corrections boss defends 'Zaoui and Bain' lookalikes
12:00PM Saturday January 05, 2008

The Corrections Department has defended the actions of two staff members who attended a work Christmas function dressed as former prison inmates Ahmed Zouai and David Bain.

The staff members turned up as asylum seeker (and alleged terrorist) Zouai and accused murderer Bain for a themed party where head office staff dressed up as their favourite notable New Zealanders.

National Party Corrections spokesman Simon Power said the workers' choice of dress was irresponsible given their role in a government justice organisation.

However, Corrections acting chief executive Phil McCarthy told the Dominion Post newspaper the pair were juniors and not directly involved in managing offenders, even though most staff went as sportspeople.

"In the context of a staff Christmas party, I don't think it matters a jot."

It would be different if the two workers were employed as probation officers or warders, or had had contact with the former inmates, he said.

However "they're as likely to have been a clerk or information officer".

The pair were simply masquerading in costume -- "in David Bain's case it involved no more than a rather large cardigan", Mr McCarthy said.

He said he did not know how Ahmed Zaoui had dressed but said "a certain physical resemblance" was thought to have been the biggest motivation for the costumes.

New Zealand's foremost alleged familicidal murderer and leisureware icon David Bain

and for anyone not up to speed with fascinating story of David Bain you can either check out his Wikipedia entry here or, alternatively, a blog post which attempts to collate every sick joke about Bain ever cracked in New Zealand

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and commiserations to my Kiwi friends over the tragic news of the recent death of that great New Zealander and leading exponent of the national haircut - Sir Edmund Hillary



Truly the end of an era, and a reminder of more innocent times when leaving someone to die on a mountainside because you were in a bit of a hurry wasn't a prerequisite for having a movie made about your climbing exploits

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NB Connoisseurs of ballsed-up and gratuitous anti-terror raids and nonsense items labeled by police as terrorist equipment may enjoy this story which was reported in the aftermath of the truly epic series of ballsed-up and gratuitous anti-terror raids in New Zealand last year (all completely justified by the appalling toll taken by terrorists in New Zealand in recent years)...


Pensioner feels violated by police raid
5:00AM Thursday October 18, 2007

A Tauranga pensioner feels "violated" after armed police stormed his home, "trashed" the place, and left with three jackets and an air rifle.

Clive Martin, 67, said he learned from neighbours that the armed offenders squad had raided his property on Tuesday afternoon while he was out.

His home is one of dozens police are searching as part of a massive operation after the discovery of alleged weapons training camps in the Bay of Plenty.

Police have so far made 17 arrests.

Mr Martin's Redmond St home was left with a smashed window, a broken window latch and a mess in his shed after the raid. He said he was upset when he found a 20-page search warrant sitting on his table stating there "is reasonable ground for believing" there were items inside which were an offence relating to either "participating in a terrorist group", or the unlawful possession of firearms or restricted weapons.

The warrant stated the home could contain clothing from "camps" in January and June this year, which Mr Martin said he had no involvement in.

Other items suspected of being at the property are detailed on the warrant's four-page list of military-style equipment, some of which has appeared on the internet auction website Trade Me.

Mr Martin said he had no idea why his home was searched and was "gutted" police had linked him to people potentially involved in terrorist crimes.

"It is a big mystery and I feel violated. As far as I'm concerned, I've been violated," he said. "They've trashed my house. I just vacuumed it out - there's dirty mud all over the floor. They've trashed my shed, they've trashed my linen cupboard."

Police took an old oilskin jacket, a raincoat, a polarfleece jacket and magnets that he used to hold loose change. They also took an air rifle...

Part of the Polartec TerrorFleece™ range - absolutely lethal in trained and desperate hands
(though, obviously, still not a patch on the ultimate WMD that is the awesome Delta 6250 - aka 'Satan's lunchbox')

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That Newsnight report on Policy Exchange faking evidence...

Here's that Newsnight piece on neo-con fake think tank Policy Exchange forging evidence I mentioned a few days ago. I doubt that Youtube will be keeping it up for very long...








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New spoof news site in town

Here’s a site that might be worth keeping an eye on

The Daily Mash

There have been a few attempts at creating a British equivalent of the The Onion (legend has it that it was funny once) over the years but, to my knowledge, none were successful

Over the weekend quite a few people (including myself) were linking to a spoof headline on a new British fake news site which shows some promise…


LONDON BOMB 'NOT SCARY ENOUGH', BROWN TELLS MI5


Since then The Daily Mash has followed up with stories that include…


UK THREAT LEVEL RAISED TO 'UNDERPANTS'

DAILY MASH UNVEILS 'TERROR-NEWS' LOGO

AIRPORT ATTACKERS TO BE CHARGED UNDER ANTI-SMOKING LAWS


Fine work. It smacks of someone trawling through a few dozen forums and blogs and nicking the best comments but fine, and important, work nevertheless

Other, non terror related, headlines that have caught my eye include…

• Rosa Klebb wins labour deputy contest
  
  
• BRITAIN FLOODED WITH VOMIT AFTER DIANA CONCERT "We managed to hold it down until Blair and then it was like The Exorcist," say TV viewers
  
  
• And an excellent extract from Ricky Gervais’ (sic.) blog that is absolutely spot on IMHO

"... Heard the news today that Bernard Manning is dead. As I sat on my hotel balcony, texting Gary Shandling, the totally brilliant genius behind Larry Sanders, I started thinking to myself that comedy has come a long, long way since those dark days when smoke-filled working men's clubs were home to comedians making fun of minorities without even doing it ironically. That's just lazy"

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By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes

Paul over at Conspiraloon™ HQ has just put together a useful and comprehensive style guide to recreating the David Icke cosmic vibe on your own web pages




Unfortunately, as Paul himself admits, the mainstream media is already starting to copy the distinctive and attractive Conspiraloon™ look




Though the classier newspapers are still presenting their rabid, warmongering bullcrap in their traditional, more high brow format




And this week’s competition for all those non Conspiraloons™ out there – Complete the following statement in 100 words or less:

‘I believe that the mainstream media is not preparing public opinion for another war of aggression with the aid of lies and bullshit because…’

Non conspiratorial explanations for the apparently co-ordinated nature of the media campaign and the fact that no journalists appear to remember how they were fooled (sic.) before the invasion of Iraq will earn particularly high marks

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