You’ve got to shake it to wake it

One of my favourite pet rants in recent years has been the post-9/11 enhanced security at airport thing.

It just hasn’t made any sense.

And it certainly wasn’t going to stop any serious terrorists with martyrdom on their minds.

My own personal record low point when it came to exasperation at the sheer stupidity of it all coincided roughly with the moment when a security officer at Atlanta airport demanded that I take my boots off for scanning after I had picked up my hold luggage and was trying to make my way out of the airport after just flying in from the UK. At which point I’d say my chances of me blowing up my flight over the Atlantic were roughly, um, zero. However, she did have a gun. Under those circumstances, she could have told me to put a paper bag on my head and stand on my hands as part of a security check and I would have obliged.

All over the World forgetful airline travellers have been stripped of such fearsome weapons of mass death as nail clippers and small penknives whilst being allowed to carry much more potentially provocative items onboard unmolested.

Cigarette lighters are the classic example. Even after Richard Reid’s Marx Brothers style comedy routine trying to detonate his baseball boots with a succession of book matches, you could still take butane lighters onto aircraft. After all, there are so many legitimate things you could be doing in flight with a cigarette lighter

Another, less obvious, example of a potentially naughty thing people have been allowed to take onboard aircraft is duty free booze.

And, for reasons that will now be more widely understood, I personally developed a morbid fixation on Sheridan’s Coffee Licquer. It was something about that two bottles joined as one thing that really sparked my imagination.

It may look like an anally intrusive sex toy but it's actually a
premium brand licquer - or is it?

From a budding terrorist’s point of view, liquid binary explosives have a lot going for them

• They aren’t all that difficult to produce
• They look innocuous
• They are stable until mixed
• They are hard to detect
• You can hide them in Sheridan’s bottles

Further technical information about the fluffy and exciting benefits of binary explosives can be found on this commercial site here. I particularly enjoyed these two bits…

… can be transported around the world by any method, including commercial passenger aircraft. This makes our product rapidly available to those Customers who require safe, secure, single-purpose, demolition explosives throughout the world

And

… the explosive self-neutralizes after a period of time, becoming a non-explosive. This unique characteristic of our product is very important to those Customers concerned with the proliferation of explosives-based terrorist devices

Actually, if you root around the site a little bit you discover that the ‘self-neutralised’ explosive can magically become de-neutralised simply by shaking it, Orangina-style.

Unfortunately, unlike the imaginary explosive chemical vests our police went chasing off after in Forest Gate a couple of months ago or the ricin made from old cherry pips a couple of years before that this stuff is serious and can kill people.

And even though binary explosives have been around for fifty years the media has done a stand-up job of making them sound awfully exotic and mysterious. Because, as we all know, the most mysterious threats are the scariest threats. Why be scared of boring old Semtex when you can be really scared of ‘special liquids’?

These 'special liquids' have always been a credible threat and their existence hardly a big secret to anyone who has seen Die Hard 3. So, my question is why have all the security staff in airports been ordered to fuck around confiscating manicure sets for the last five years rather than focusing on stuff that can really kill people. What was that all about?

It’s the same old question time and time again. Are the people yanking our chains simply stupid or are they wicked?

-

A top Orangina anecdote from Wikipedia that seems vaguely appropriate…

In France, Orangina is also famous for its advertisements: they almost always show people dressed into Orangina bottle costumes. The most famous one was the Orangina Rouge costume person, who was depicted as a mad chainsaw-wielding killer, attacking a family in a car who travelled through the forest. This was the origin of the popular French catchphrase: "Mais pourquoi est-il si méchant?" spoken by a child ("But why is he so evil?") to which the Orangina Rouge character replies with his equally famous catchphrase: "PARCE QUE! Ahahaha!" ("BECAUSE! Ahahaha!")

Give Me the Child Until He Is Seven and I Will Show You the Man

And whilst on the subject of Israeli kids scribbling on artillery shells, with or without the promise of a big bag of sweeties afterwards from the nice AFP photographyman, I couldn’t help remembering the classic on-line gallery of a series of pictures drawn by Korean primary school children on the theme ‘Fuck Japan’

Koreans, of course, love poo almost as much as they hate the Japanese so several of the pictures cleverly manage to combine both poo and Japan. Marvellous.

Now that’s what I call hatred.

And if anyone thinks that writing off an entire nation as being obsessed with scat is too much of a generalisation, try visiting here, and here, and here, and definitely here

Boong-Ga Boong-Ga

Foreground Interest

If you’re one of those people who take your photography seriously there will inevitably be times when you find yourself wanting something to complement an otherwise so-so landscape shot by sticking something interesting in the foreground. Some travel photographers have been known to carry around small rucksacks filled with colourful scarves that they stick onto someone before shoving them into the frame. I occasionally travel with a bright yellow rubber duckie or girlfriend that can both be used in the same way.

And for those people who haven’t got the forethought to travel with their own portable foreground interest many of the great tourist traps of the world feature professional models who will indulge virtually any whim for a modest fee; blokes dressed as Crazy Horse sitting on a pony in Monument Valley, a veritable legion of legionnaires at the Colosseum, whatever.

The quest for perfect foreground interest can be especially tricky for working photojournalists.

Photojournalists earn their living capturing images of wholesale destruction, often with a wide-angle lens plonked on the front of their camera so that they can pack in as much wholesale destruction as is humanly possible. Under these circumstances, sticking someone in the foreground of the frame to convey a sense of scale, context and heart-wringing ‘human interest’ is an absolute must.

I raise the subject of foreground interest because someone emailed me (thanks Simon) with a link to a story about a woman in Beirut who keeps popping up in the foreground of pictures of buildings flattened by the Israelis.

She certainly looks the part but I reckon she’s just a little too ‘hammy’ for Western tastes

Some commentators in the blog post that talks about this woman have jumped in and claimed that this is proof that all coverage of what is happening in Lebanon is manipulated with an anti-Israeli bias.

Ditto for the now infamous picture of Beirut, processed with the ‘Add shit loads more smoke tool’ available in the latest beta version of Photoshop.

There is, as they say, a war on for our minds.

The truth, as with all disputes, is that we’re undoubtedly on the receiving end of half-truths and embellishments from both sides of the conflict in Lebanon. I don’t doubt for a second that some of the material coming out of Beirut is jizzed up to make it more dramatic and saleable. On the other hand those apartment blocks have clearly been flattened by someone, with or without the addition of the almost mandatory wailing woman in black dress in the foreground.

Or how about that photograph of Israeli children scribbling messages on artillery shells destined for the Lebanon...

Were these kids, as I have read in a few places, put up to it by photojournalists looking for marketable photographs?

Who knows?

The ludicrous part of the entire business of manipulated news and photographs and careful selection of what stories do or don’t get airtime is the way that people, particularly Internet people, will bleat and moan about how biased the media is, except for those times when they see a story that agrees with their world view. At which point they will swallow the story wholesale and without criticism. It doesn’t matter if you’re pro or anti Israel, Left Wing or Right Wing – everyone, and I'm not excluding myself, falls for it.

That is, of course, how The Game is played.

The only real and sustained bias displayed by our media is a pro-corporate agenda. Everything else is just put there to distract us and keep us at each other’s throats.

And it’s working a treat.

The latest in London-based virtual mayhem

Thanks to a tip off from the Londonist blog I have just thoroughly enjoyed watching the trailer for Gangs of London – a new game for the Sony PSP due out soon.

It’s looks like it’s going to feature some seriously stomach-churning content

But there again, crap Mockney accents always have that effect on me.

Bob Hoskins, Suffolk born and bred - Lord of the Mockneys

Sadly, the game designers haven’t included very much of South London at all, which is criminal, and they appear to have a peculiar take on which ethnic groups hold sway over particular parts of town. I’m still having trouble getting my head round the notion that the area including and around the Bank of England is controlled by a Yardie gang called the EC2 Crew. I’ve heard some conspiracy theories in my time but that one’s something special.

The game does, however, appear to allow players to enter Tube stations and shoot people in the face repeatedly so it’s faultlessly accurate in that respect and solves that tricky problem of knowing what to buy the SO19 Officers in your life for Christmas.

The chances of me ever actually playing the full retail version of Gangs of London are somewhat reduced by me not owning a Sony PSP and not planning on getting one either. Fortunately, there’s a considerably cheaper alternative on offer in the form of the Goggles – the Google Earth Flight simulator.

Here’s me fantasising about reducing my next Council Tax bill by knocking City Hall out of action...

I Missed ... bollocks

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both

John Reid - yet another New Labour c^nt wanting to be Prime Minister

Some blinding sound bites from the Home Secretary John Reid today -

"There is no room for complacency. We are probably in the most sustained period of severe threat since the end of the Second World War"

"We may have to modify some of our freedoms in the short-term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values and would destroy our freedoms and values in the long-term"

It would be nice if John had quantified exactly what he meant by "some" of our freedoms or how long "the short-term" will turn out to be. Presumably until there aren’t any Muslims out there fucked off with the way the West treats them. By next Monday or Tuesday maybe?

So much for the Cold War then. It would appear that, in hindsight, the entire massed weaponry of the Red Army was but nothing in comparison with a handful of mental cases scattered in dingy bedsits across the country.

Nowhere near as big a threat to our Way of Life as that Muslim bloke
who works in your local fish and chip shop

What baffles me, what really baffles me, is how our politicians can get away with fascist crap like this, time and time again. Admittedly 80%+ of the people are more occupied with their mortgage payments or choosing their next cellphone but of the minority of people who do follow things and do give a damn how can any of them not see what is going on?

and what c^nts like Reid and Blair refuse to acknowledge is that terrorist bombs, however big and scary, cannot change the nature of our society. Bombs cannot take our freedoms away from us, they just kill people. Our own politicians, however, particularly traitorous ones, can do both.

Reid and Blair and all the rest are either too stupid to realise this. In which case they are unfit to govern. Or they do realise this and they are wicked and deserve to be strung up.

Our government is currently playing one of the oldest tricks in the book and it seems to be getting away with it.

There was a time in this country when no politician would have dreamed of coming out with junk like Reid came out with today. They would have been torn apart.

I, and I suspect a few others out there, are getting quite accustomed to a sense of loss, and shame, at what is being done to a country I once took some pride in being born in.

And the longer this goes on, with little or no opposition, the more I’m inclined to think that people really do deserve what is going to happen to them.

The joys of being cold-called

If I live long enough, I fully expect that one day that I will become a Jedi Master of grumpy old bastards. When it comes to being a grumpy old bastard, The Force, as they say, is strong in this one.

And consequently I positively welcome ‘cold’ sales calls as they enable me to hone my grumpy old bastard skills to a fine edge.

Today was a particularly fine day for honing…

Sales Call No.1 – The Credit Card Company

Stef cold called by his credit card company. After some preamble…

Sales Rep: And would you like to take out our repayment protection coverage?

Stef: No thank you

Sales Rep: Why Not?

Stef: I’m sorry. Did you just ask me why not?

Sales Rep: Yes I did. The package offers significant benefits that I think you should know about

Stef: And I have to explain to you why I am not interested? How’s that?

Sales Rep: Er …

Stef: You can go away now

Sales Rep: I’m sorr …

Stef: No, really. You can go away now

Sales call No.2 – The Mobile Phone Company

Stef’s Mobile rings. Stef answers mobile

Female voice ,calling from what sounds like a room filled with two hundred people all shouting at each other, mumbles something unrecognizable

Stef: I’m sorry I can’t hear you.

Female voice: mumble that better? mumble calling from Orange mumble mumble

Stef: I still can’t hear you. You say you’re calling from Orange?

Voice: mumble your full name and postcode? mumble

Stef: You want my name and postcode?

Voice: mumble data protection mumble know who mumble

Stef: You want my name and postcode to confirm who I am?

Voice: mumble

Stef: And who are you?

Voice: mumble from Orange mumble

Stef: How do I know you’re calling from Orange? You are some stranger who has just phoned me up from out of the blue asking me for personal details

Voice: mumble

Voice: mumble mumble

Stef turns phone off and leaves it off

Matthew Parris - seems like a decent bloke to me

And whilst on the subject of closet homosexual politicians, the Israeli assault on Lebanon and Islamic terrorism, I’ve just read a piece by Matthew Parris that struck a chord with me and mirrored my own feelings on the lunacy that’s currently raining down on the Middle East.

I’m a big Parris fan. Maybe one day someone will shatter my illusions but he strikes me as a thoughtful and (usually) honest man – both of which qualities impeded his prospects as a Member of Parliament more than being a closet batty boy ever could.

The fact that Parris’ public outing of Peter Mandelson whilst being interviewed by Mandy’s mate Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen on British television or that Parris looks uncannily like a Romulan starship commander are just gravy.

Matthew Parris

Romulan Starship Commander

Anyway, Parris’ article ‘Two reasons why I cannot bring myself to write about the Israel problem’ did strike a nerve -

When I try to compose my thoughts, the resolution to write keeps slipping: doubly undermined…

First from a feeling of boredom. The boredom arises from neither carelessness nor apathy, but the quiet anger we may feel when a subject is endlessly and passionately debated by disputants who are unlikely to change their minds and — if the truth be known — mentally armoured against opposing thoughts. The rest of us wish we could walk away …

The second is a desperately tricky thing to express. I steer clear because I have too many friends who are Jews whose feelings I don’t want to hurt. You will wish to remind me that to be Jewish is not to be a supporter of everything (or anything) the state of Israel does, and of course that’s true. You will point out that among the harshest critics of Israeli policy are Israeli and Jewish voices, and of course that’s true too. But it’s a personal observation which one cannot just brush aside that, on this, those who are Jewish tend to have much stronger feelings than others, and that they are overwhelmingly if not universally sympathetic to the Israeli cause, more inclined than most to justify the actions of Israel, and prone to feeling personally wounded if one disagrees. Such feelings inhabit some of the people I like and respect best in my life.

The problem is that I cannot agree with them…

Matthew's got my number.

You can argue the whys and wherefores of how this situation came about, I would argue that it is quite deliberate, but the simple truth is that a large number of ordinary ‘diaspora’ Jews do see criticism of Israel as being a criticism of themselves. In a way that, say, your average British Citizens or, more to the point, expatriot British citizens wouldn’t consider criticism of the behaviour of the British government as being targeted at themselves personally.

This is pretty fucked up in my opinion and a pretty slick move on the part of a group of people who know/ knew full well what they were doing.

It’s a very old game that’s being played and people forget, time and again, that almost without exception all wars are started by, and for the benefit of, a minority of people and the rest of us poor dumb schmucks get suckered into playing along.

Right now, ordinary Israelis, and Jews around the world, probably support what the Israeli government is doing in Lebanon because they are scared and they have been encouraged to be scared. I can understand that and I am having trouble seeing any real difference between this situation and the bullshit, and subsequent support, that accompanied British participation in the invasion of Iraq.

What really depresses me is that in both cases, large numbers of ordinary people are too bamboozled and manipulated to think things through. They simply fail to comprehend that reducing countries to rubble and blowing all that is dear to other people clean into the next world absolutely will not make life safer for any of us. That is unless you go the whole hog, apply the ‘Salvador Option’ and exterminate entire communities.

No people = No terrorists/ insurgents. Easy peasy.

It's what Stalin would have done.

What a pathetic, woeful mess this all is…

Current Threat Level - Severe

I've just been perusing the intelligence.gov.uk site and especially the spiffy new Threat Level Indicator

The current risk level is SEVERE...

Of course, publishing a sliding scale of threat levels for the Public is of no real practical use unless there is a corresponding sliding scale of actions we should all take in response to each level of risk

For example,

If the risk level is 'Severe' avoid sitting next to any hairy brown people on public transport. Continue your normal life but with an enhanced sense of nagging nervousness and fear.

If the risk level is 'Extreme' take to the streets in a howling mob and hang all bearded brown people from the nearest lamp post. Read the Daily Express for further instructions.

Otherwise, without suggested courses of action, the threat level indicator would be simply be a chunk of old toss.

Fortunately, guidance is provided ...

How the Public should respond to different National Threat Levels

Public vigilance is always important regardless of the current national threat level, but it is especially important given the current national threat. Sharing national threat levels with the general public keeps everyone informed and explains the context for the various security measures (for example airport security or bag searches) we may encounter as we go about our daily lives.

Phew, for a moment there I really did think that it was a chunk of old toss.

However, even though the official threat level indicator thingie clearly is an excellent way to spend public money and keep us all informed, I still prefer this alternate indicator because it comes in prettier colours -

Current Terror Alert Level

Connections

Whilst on the subject of forgetting to take your Lithium and sitting in a room surrounded by thousands of newspapers trying to tease out hidden connections between stories, how about these two entirely unconnected stories which hit the wires round about the same time yesterday -

Forest Gate shooting ruled accidental

Terror raid victim faces arrest over child porn images

I particularly enjoy the way that the c^nt at the Daily Telegraph who wrote the second story managed to end it with an implied whinge that the victims of the terror raid have subsequently been put up in a hotel at tax payers’ expense -

Along with their parents and two women, believed to be their sisters, they have been booked into five rooms at a Holiday Inn in Bloomsbury, central London, where single and double rooms cost £190 per night. The facilities include a pool, sauna and spa.

My guess is that, given a choice, those people would rather have not been shot, arrested on kiddie porn charges and had their house forensically dismantled than get to stay in a hotel with a pool for two months.

Kudos to the Independent Police Complaints Commission though. Its report on the Stockwell Shooting still hasn’t seen the light of day and probably won’t until next year, if ever, but it managed to wrap up the Forest Gate thing in less than two months, just in time to coincide with those kiddie porn accusations

Impressive work.

Mind you, you’ve got to be careful what connections you make and what you say on the Internet these days.

The very prolific Postman Patel toyed with the intriguing coincidence of Tony Blair’s buddy Lord Levy being kidnapped by the Metropolitan Police just before the decision whether to prosecute the Met for the Stockwell shooting was announced and his blog was blacklisted by Google in a jiffy.

Of course, the problem with coincidences is that you can never be sure can you?

And you end up having to make ‘calls’ based on your own personal world view; or rather the world view of the group of people most successful in imprinting their memes on your squishy, impressionable brain when it first started trying to make sense of the World.

One thing we can all agree on though is that the Internet is a very bad thing indeed. International terrorism or child porn, what’s the difference anyway? Those beardies at Forest Gate were clearly into some kind of heinous, Internet-based shit and it’s the sacred responsibility of our Guardians to find out what it was.

Remember -

Internet bad

Newspapers, police and politicians good

Nice newspapers, police and politicians protect Mongo from naughty Internet

Mongo like newspapers, police and politicians

Mongo not ask too many questions and go shopping instead

Rent Boys and Concrete Owls

The funniest exchange I’ve seen about Tony Blair’s possible show / no show at this year’s Bohemian Grove gathering took place by way of comment at the bottom of a post in Guido Fawkes blog about the antics at the Grove -

Tony Blair camping it up can you imagine, wonder if he took Gordon?

Seriously, they do worship a huge concrete owl and employ rent boys, all recorded facts

To which someone replied

That's still preferable to the LibDem practices of worshipping rent boys and employing concrete owls.

Wm.

Mingis Campell - really does look like a concrete owl

Mark Oaten - really does worship rent boys

I must confess to an increasing sense of nervousness after Mark Oaten (married, two kids) explained that going bald and having a mid life crisis was the direct cause of his enthusiastic interest in rent boys.

I turned 40 a while back and most of my hair escaped seawards via the plug hole years ago. And I'm concerned that any day now I might finally lose that final Judas Follicle that leaves me hungering for paid sex with male prostitutes.

The exchange about concrete owls and rent boys also includes passing reference to the rumours that Gordon Brown (married, two kids) has also dallied with same sex love in his past.

What is it about politics that makes it so attractive to (alleged) closet homosexuals anyway?

Years ago, in those dark days before the Internet, there was a time when virtually every homosexual in London claimed to had, or claimed to know someone who had, done five rounds with then Conservative Party Leader in waiting Michael Portillo (married, no kids).

The amusing thing about that story was that once you were in on it it was pretty clear that some of the national newspapers were taunting Portillo on the sly on a pretty regular basis. I remember one piece in a tabloid that ran a story about an affair between an unnamed Black professional footballer and an unnamed senior politician. And right next to that piece the paper had placed a huge picture of Portillo in the context of another story.

Something similar, but admittedly much more overt, is currently taking place with Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott (married, two kids) and a couple of women he is rumoured to have had a few fumbles with.

John Prescott knobbing David Miliband?

Of course, if you’re not already in on the rumour you can end up like that bloke in A Beautiful Mind, sitting in a room surrounded by thousands of newspapers trying to piece together the hidden meanings and messages encoded in their pages

But that’s good too