Stranger than Fiction?

Today, of course, marks the launch of the new Ministry of Justice (minijust)

Huzzaah!

I appreciate that it could just be me but life in this country really is looking more and more like a really shite Orwell adaptation every day.

Maybe it is. I'm sure I saw an episode of the Twilight Zone that went like that once or maybe I'm getting mixed up with that chunk of Will Ferrell schmaltz I saw a few weeks ago. Maybe I'm not really writing this post at all

Confused now...

Spot the odd Blair out - Tony, Ian or Eric. Text A, B or C to the usual number. Outrageous call charges apply. Please ask an adult or a member of the state security apparatus before entering

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A spot of housekeeping for MI5?

Another day, another spate of terrorist arrests

including the widow of the alleged leader of the 7/7 bombings

And as The Antagonist notes there are strong, though admittedly circumstantial grounds, to question why…

• Has it taken the police so long to decide to collar Mrs Khan aka Hassina Patel?
  
  
• Why the security services (claim to have) stopped monitoring the Khans even though they were associated with the ‘Operation Crevice’ terror plot?
  
  
• Why the allegedly psychotic, rabidly Islamofascist Khans kept getting invites to garden parties at Buck House and tours of the Houses of Parliament, even after being linked with the Crevice crew?
  
  
• And last, but not least, why the security services lied about having no knowledge of Khan prior to 7/7, as well as claiming that the alleged 7/7 bombers operated as a self-contained unit with no additional support or accomplices?

From what little hard information that has made its way into the public domain it seems pretty certain that MI5 knew a lot more about the alleged 7/7 bombers than it claims to have. There is also a distinct possibility that our intelligence services have played a more ‘hands on’ role in at least some of the alleged plots than many of us would consider healthy, moral or sane.

And the argument that our security services have to keep schtum about everything they do to avoid compromising national security just doesn’t wash.

We supposedly live in a democracy and informed consent is an absolute prerequisite for democracies to work. We are not children and our government and security services are not our fucking parents. They, supposedly, serve us. And if we run higher levels of person risk in order to sustain informed consent, well, that’s price of fucking freedom.

And I want to be informed!!!

It's not an option or some airy fairy idealised concept. It's an obligation

We have been demonstrably lied to about the intelligence operations that were taking place before and after 7/7 and this needs to be dealt with.

Unfortunately, those people calling for an inquiry given most coverage in the national press seem to be starting from the assumption that our security services are fundamentally straight. They don’t seem to have any conceptual problem with an inquiry that does the same.

It could be because I don’t come from a class that has a vested, inborn stake in maintaining the underlying status quo of the way this country is run. It could be that I know enough history, in spite of the state education system and media, not to be so fucking dumb. Or it could be because I’m essentially a mistrustful bastard. Whatever the reason, I believe, I know, that there’s no way on God’s earth that any state-sanctioned inquiry into 7/7 is going to do anything to untangle the mess of spin, disinfo, misinfo and plain bullshit associated with 7/7.

But what it would do is provide more evidence of the kind of crap we are fed, day in, day out, for those with an open-enough mind to see.

So let’s have one. Even if it turns out to total bollocks

Assuming that is, the establishment can find someone with the brass nuts to head it up. Judging by the ongoing farce that should be the inquest into Princess Diana’s death? / autocide? (ten years and counting) it looks like they’re in short supply at the moment...



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Oyster-matics

By now, virtually everyone who travels regularly on public transport in London carries an ‘Oyster Card’. You can still pay for your fares with cash, but at a premium of 50% or more.

Some of us, though I suspect only a small minority, have an issue with being herded into using a system that records and archives a detailed log of our individual movements.

Personally, I’d be a lot less bothered about the implications of using an Oyster Card if I believed that the organisations collating and using the data were trustworthy and accountable or subject to the same level of supervision that individuals increasingly are.

But you’d have to be out of your gourd or plain stupid to even start to believe that.

There is also the small matter of the fact that the Oyster Card system now charges steals a flat £4 from you if it gets confused about any aspect of your journey. It is then your responsibility to try and get your money back

Last Friday I was using one of my Oyster Cards and, due to an electronic barrier jamming/ fucking up, I got hit for £4. There then followed a series of exchanges with the staff in a couple of ticket offices and, eventually, a phone call to Oyster Central

High points of the experience included…

Getting a statement of my account from my local ticket office

More or less since the invention of numbers, statements have shared certain features in common

• They have a starting and a closing balance
• They include all transactions between the starting and closing balance
• They give some clue as to whether each transaction is a ‘plus’ or a ‘negative’

The idea being you can see if everything adds up.

The new Oyster Card system bravely does away with all that old fashioned nonsense and just presents you with an edited selection of transactions and no means of tieing them into what money you started with or finished with



The poor gimp in the ticket office had no means of checking how much credit I had started the day with and therefore no way of checking that my balance at the end of the day was correct. He advised me to call the Oyster Help Line

The Oyster Help Line

A fairly involved call, the outcome of which turned on how much money I had on my card at the start of the day.

I had taken a photograph of a ticket machine statement which had clearly said that I had £13.30 in the kitty...




The lady on the phone told me that the ticket machine was wrong and that I only started the day with £9.30 and also that a £4 charge listed in the statement had not actually been charged…

‘Um, could you run that by me one more time’

‘Due to timing issues, the balance you see displayed on the ticket machine is not always entirely accurate’

‘And that’s not unusual?

‘No’

‘So, just one more time. When this multi-million pound system tells me that I'm starting the day with a particular balance on my card it really might be a completely different figure?’

‘Yes’

‘Well, there’s not much else to talk about is there?’

‘On that question, no. Do you have anything else you’d like to know?’

‘No … thank you’


So hats off to whoever commissioned and signed-off on the Oyster Card system and the year’s supply of blowjobs and lifetime golf club memberships they presumably received in exchange for their outstanding work. Not only have they delivered a system that includes supply of personal information to unaccountable bastards at its very core it also can’t count either

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What you're saying Mr Dimbleby is wh'affle...

Postman Patel is waxing lyrical about what I can only put down to a failure in the call-screening process on the weekly BBC phone in show 'Any Answers' yesterday.

Poor old Jonathan Dimbleby was forced to bluster his way through a call where a well-informed member of the general public raised past examples of MI5 involvement in terrorism in the context of demands for an inquiry into the 7/7 bombings.

Sadly, Lord Patel's vast and hugely-qualified technical staff were unable to find a way to record the exchange for posterity and a plea was made for assistance in this matter.

Unencumbered by huge technical qualifications and encumbered by moderate quantities of alcohol, my solution was to hold a recording mp3 player up to my computer whilst playing the clip off the BBC website. Fired by this success, I then pasted the resulting mp3 into MS Photostory along with a dozen pictures of the aftermath of the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, skillfully left all settings at their default values and slapped the result up onto Youtube.

Well, given that MI5 is doing such a stand-up job of keeping this a free country it would be almost disrespectful not to take advantage of that freedom. Wouldn't it?

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edit: The Any Answers clip is worth listening to as much for how Jonathan Dimbleby deals with the call as for the content of the call itself

Fans of the excellent Thank You for Smoking, and most people who have seen it are, will remember that one of the key lines of the film is...

"That's the beauty of argument. Because if you argue correctly, you're never wrong"

No matter how one-sided an issue; for example, cigarettes are physically bad for you, as long as you can come up with a counter-argument, or pretend that there is a counter argument you can always keep a significant proportion of the general public baffled with bullshit.




Cue Jonathan Dimbleby, challenged by someone who's clearly read the Ballast Report and other documents that pin-down past state involvement in terrorism as well as is ever going to happen...

" ... all these assertions and allegations you are making ... we haven't got time to go into them ... are all fiercely disputed"

"... the context in which you place them is open to question and the particular way you place them is highly disputed as I am sure you will know is ..."

the mealy-mouthed fucker

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Take it. It's fine...

Many thanks to Antagonist for switching me onto a couple of video clips up on Gootube...

The first is a clip of mentalist Derren Brown passing off blank sheets of paper as money in NYC and getting away with it, at least some of the time

"Take it. It's fine"

If the techniques being used by Brown aren't immediately clear a quick perusal of the comments will give some idea of what he's up to. It's well worth understanding

It would be easy enough to dismiss what Brown does as merely an entertainment - a televised parlour game or curiousity. However, I'd argue that he is communicating something important about how easy it is to influence people and the nature of consent.

Or maybe he's just fucking with my head.

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The second video clip may or may not document an example of the kind of thing Brown may or may not be warning us about.

Personally, I don't have a lot of time for the 'no plane' theories that crop up when discussing what really may have happened on 9/11. They are a distraction from much more compelling and less contentious issues that are easier to communicate to someone with an open mind - the 'stand-down' of the US air force, Bush's behaviour on the day, the shenanigans around WTC7, the subsequent silence concerning the short trades, the five guys videoing the attack from across the river, and so on and so on - the list is long.

However, an amusing DIY video has appeared on Youtube that lays two live video feeds from the day, side by side, at the time of the second WTC strike. One appears to show a plane hitting the building, one doesn't...



Quite odd but I've not doubt that sooner or later someone will come up with a plausible-sounding rebuttal that people will accept or reject depending on their preconceptions. That's how the 9/11 story has played out so far

What's more interesting to me is another part of the clip where the makers overlay the live commentary from different TV stations to demonstrate just how similar and synchronized the different commentaries appear to be.

Again, someone will come come up with a rebuttal; based on similar kinds of people reacting to the same event in similar kinds of ways. However, there is something about the coincidence of the commentaries and their content that got the hairs on the back of my neck sticking up, particularly the apparently superfluous line...

'This is something you have seen on live television - just unfolding'

Sure, it could be just the babblings of a news commentator trying to keep talking but there's a little part of me that saying that this is just the sort of thing Derren Brown would say...

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Giving succour to terrorists...

It's getting near to that time in history again boys and girls...

In case anyone missed the jaw-dropping interview between Jeremy Paxman and retired General Michael Rose about the ‘war’ in Iraq last night, here’s a link to the BBC page featuring the choicest quotes…

"As Lord Chatham said, when he was speaking on the British presence in North America, he said 'if I was an American, as I am an Englishman, as long as one Englishman remained on American native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms … The Iraqi insurgents feel exactly the same way."

“It is the soldiers who have been telling me from the frontline that the war they have been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it and the sooner we start talking politics and not military solutions, the sooner they will come home and their lives will be preserved."

"The catastrophes that were predicted after Vietnam never happened. The same thing will occur after we leave Iraq."


Given the fact that Paxman’s show has been unashamedly parroting government horsecrap about fighting Al Qaeda ‘over there instead of over here’, the steady progress that is being made in Iraq and the dangers of falling geopolitical dominoes for the last three years, the look of shocked surprise on Paxman’s face was more than understandable.

My ears could have been tricking me but at one point I could swear Rose said that the insurgents were 'right' to resist the occupation.

And throughout the all too brief interview all I could keep thinking was that if General Rose was a) brown, and b) not a former senior military commander, he would have been running a moderate risk of being locked-up for 30 days without charge whilst the police rummaged through his household cupboards in search of flashlights, flour, bleach, fruit, Manchester United posters, re-usable sandwich boxes, toothbrushes and any other 'must have' terrorist accessories.

But he’s not. So he wasn’t

"If I had a choice of going up against jihadists armed with AK-47s, RPGs and Semtex or jihadists packing a few of these babies I'd take the AKs every time..."

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The Cat crept into the Crevice, crapped and crept out again

A few of the things about the Crevice trial and its treatment in the media that are bugging me...

• The scanty coverage given to the defence case
• Virtually no mention of the fact that the jury set a new record for the time it took to reach a verdict and that, eventually, the judge decided that he would accept a majority verdict
• Little reporting and absolutely no investigation into the possible validity of claims made by the defendants that testimonies were extracted under torture and that the ISI was involved in the 'plot' somehow and exerting pressure via defendants' families
  
• The sheer all-pervading dodginess of the prosecution's 'star' witness
  

Basically, there's been a total absence of rigour in the treatment of the Crevice trial. At least two or three members of the jury may have anguished about passing a guilty verdict but our media has displayed no such doubts

Which, in a sane world, would be surprising given the frankly awful record of recent terror trials...

• The Ricin Plot that never was and a prosecution case so lunatic that several jury members subsequently went on television to express their disgust and concern
• The conviction of Dhiren Barot - now serving a minimum of 40 years, basically for being a nutter
• A personal favourite - that Iraqi cab driver accused of driving around London whilst listening to 'hypnotic music' and planning terrorist jihad
• Insert your own personal favourite here - there are plenty to choose from

Does this mean that I am alluding to some vast establishment conspiracy? A conspiracy designed to perpetuate the War on Terror myth through a series of high profile trials of idiots, nutters and patsies.

Maybe, but it would not have to be as vast as some people who mock 'conspiracy theories' would like to pretend.

It would only take a few people to get the ball rolling. After that, the kind of unimaginative jobsworths and gauleiters who have always found employment and favour in the machinery of state will diligently identify terrorists, whether real or imagined, till the cows come. Aside from that all you need is a morally weak and plain ignorant general public and you're away. After a while, the myth will take on a life of its own and you'll even find there are some lunatic bastards out there claiming that they really are part of some huge, shadowy, non-existent network

Alternatively, you can reject the notion that the World really does works like that sometimes. You could also prefer to believe, along with the Al-Qaeda myth, that Europe really was overrun by witches in the 17th century and that organised Satanic Ritual Abuse continues to take place, nationwide under our very noses.

Waterboarding - 17th Century style. We've come a long way since then ... and golly gee whizz now we're going back again

Personally speaking, there's something moderately ironic about how not buying into the Al-Qaeda conspiracy theory can be scornfully discounted as being itself a conspiracy theory. Like treason, what is or isn't an acceptable conspiracy theory very often seems to be a matter of dates.

And the fact is that, as with the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the British security services are intimately involved with many of the supposed Jihadist terrorists. So much so that it is absolutely impossible for anyone, including I suspect members of the security services, to tell the terrorists, agent provocateurs and dupes apart.

Of course, that's not how the story has been spun this week.

After the Crevice trial had ended it was claimed that MI5 had identified two of the 7/7 bombers associating with the alleged Crevice terrorists but decided that their role was insignificant. Later on, after the 7/7 bombings, MI5 claimed that it had no prior involvement with any of the alleged 7/7 bombers.

Which in technical terms is what is known as a lie.

And the reason being given for MI5 not keeping an eye on the two soon-to-be-alleged 7/7 bombers was because it was short of resources.

Maybe

But the reason could also be because MI5 is crap at what it does

Alternatively, maybe MI5 had other, altogether spookier, reasons for letting the two suspects go about their business unmolested and, supposedly, unobserved

Who knows? One thing I do know is that if I were to catch someone out in a lie in my personal life I wouldn't be inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt in anything else they were claiming. However, different rules apparently apply when it comes to the media's treatment of MI5's output.

And it's unlikely that any independent public inquiry into the events leading up to 7/7 will shed any meaningful light on the subject. Independent public inquiries in the UK are now subject to some spiffy new legislation that ensures that they will be neither independent nor public. On top of that, those members of the public calling for an inquiry who are given the most coverage in the media don't seem to have a problem with that.

It's looking like there will be some kind of inquiry eventually and my awesome psychic powers tell me that the line 'tragic failure of intelligence' will be used at some point and that the key conclusion will be that resources allocated to state security need to be increased significantly.

It's easy to forget in the wake of the massive coverage of the Crevice verdict that this has been just one story amongst a spate of terrorism-related arrests, speeches and news stories that have taken place over the last few weeks. The timing of all these could, of course, just be coincidental, though personally I doubt it. The timings of arrests, speeches or leaking stories to newspapers are the result of conscious decisions not chance.

It is possible therefore that the stage is being set for some kind of major event. I sincerely hope my concerns are unfounded. Having said that it's not just me who is fearful for the future. The undisputed king of jobsworth gauleiters, the head of UK police counter-terrorism said as much just over a week ago...

"Nevertheless, we suffered the appalling attacks of July 2005, and the only sensible assumption is that we shall be attacked again."

"We have nothing to Fear but Fear itself ... and, of course, rag-heads armed with Tupperware"

Or to put it another way 'Give us a free hand and the resources to do what we want to or you will die. Come to think of it, you'll die anyway'




Now the thing is when our own senior policemen take to competing with the terrorists in boasting about the fearsome capabilities of those terrorists I start to have a real fucking problem telling the police and the terrorists apart

...and what are claimed to be warnings start to sound very much like a threats.

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Where on Earth do you start? pt2

Even though it’s already been reproduced in at least a couple of other blogs, I’m posting up the statement made by solicitor Imran Khan on behalf of the five men convicted in the Crevice trial. An mp3 of the statement can be found on the July 7th Truth site. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it to be reproduced in any of the state or corporate controlled media…


I'm giving this statement on behalf of those defendants convicted today, that is Omar Khyam, Anthony Garcia, Waheed Mahmood, Jawad Akbar, and Salahuddin Amin. These are their words that they wish me to read out:

In the name of Allah the merciful, the compassionate, we bear witness there is nothing worthy of worship except Allah, and Mohammed as his messenger.

This was a prosecution driven by the security services, able to hide behind a cloak of secrecy, and eager to obtain ever greater resources and power to encroach on individual rights.

There was no limit to the money, resources and underhand strategies that were used to secure convictions in this case.

This case was brought in an atmosphere of hostility against Muslims, at home, and abroad. One stoked by this government throughout the course of this case.

This prosecution involved extensive intrusion upon personal lives, not only ours, but our families and friends.

Coached witnesses were brought forward. Forced confessions were gained through illegal detention, and torture abroad. Threats and intimidation was used to hamper the truth. All with the trial judge seemingly intent to assist the prosecution almost every step of the way.

These were just some of the means used in the desperate effort to convict. Anyone looking impartially at the evidence would realise that there was no conspiracy to cause explosions in the UK, and that we did not pose any threat to the security of this country.

It is not an offence to be young, Muslim and angry at the global injustices against Muslims.

Allah says in the Qur'an, "Oh mankind, worship your Lord who created you, and those before you, that you may become righteous."

And that's the end of the statement. Thank you.


Right now, in spite all the media coverage that has been given to the Crevice trial, it’s still hard work trying to piece together what the defence’s case actually was. Any attempt at objective coverage of terrorism trials by the British media was dumped ages ago. The role of our newspapers and television is now simply to repeat only material used by the prosecution, no matter how irrelevant or nonsensical.

And every time a particularly juicy video is shown in court the BBC always seems to get hold of the tape just in time for that day’s early evening news broadcast.

Some geezer looking inside a bag of what he thinks is fertilizer. He claims to have been working under the direction of Pakistani intelligence at the time but let's not dwell on that...

But from the little that can be picked up about the defence case it has a familiar whiff about it – some angry and foolish young men shooting their mouths off, a colossal amount of irrelevant information and bullshit presented as ‘evidence’, a little overseas torture, a dodgy star witnesses and maybe, just maybe, the odd agent provocateur

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For an example of a similar high-profile case, which doesn’t look like it will be as successful for the authorities as Crevice is turning out to be, you could do much worse that reading up on the Toronto Bomb Plot supposedly foiled last year. There are many parallels with the Crevice plot.

A small selection of the deadly haul of flashlights and barbecue grills uncovered in Toronto last year... (Also note that Canadian anti-terrorism units apparently shop for equipment at IKEA)

The most interesting aspect is the role played by Islamic convert Mubin Shaikh – the guy involved in buying the fertilizer that was allegedly going to be used by the plotters. The interesting part being that he was working undercover for the RCMP at the time - an area of activity for the RCMP that certainly wasn't covered in any episode of Due South that I've ever seen.

Next Week: Lovable mountie Benton Fraser fits up a bunch of grumpy, disaffected Pakis with the aid of some agent provocateurs and a great big IKEA bag full of cash

Apparently, the RCMP still owes Mubin $300,000 for services rendered.

Which sounds like a lot but presumably that's Canadian dollars so it only works out to something like £42.50 in real money

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Where on Earth do you start?

So, it’s been a couple of days now since the Crevice trial verdict and I still haven’t written a post on it. Which, given the past history of this blog, could be considered unusual.

The truth is that the media reaction and the spin being pumped out in the wake of the Crevice verdict is so voluminous and so all encompassing in its insanity I’m frankly left speechless.

Where on Earth do you start?

Postman Patel has had a couple of stabs at the task but he is just one of a handful of lonely voices pleading for some sanity. And we really are talking only a handful here.

My country has gone nuts

And I must confess the thought of joining the majority - just falling asleep one night and waking up as a Believer, free from all those nagging doubts and concerns - does have a certain appeal

This man believes everything he sees on Newsnight and reads in the newspapers. Why don't you?

...it's that, or migrating to an island somewhere

Answer B methinks

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Keyboard Macro redux

A word of follow-up on that picture of my keyboard I posted a couple of days ago with the explicit intention of grossing-out anyone stumbling onto this blog.

It seems to have achieved the desired objective and a couple of friends have expressed concerns about receiving emails from me written on that particular, potentially infectious, object

Yes, it really is that gross in person. Actually it’s grosser. No stage make-up or special effects were used

It is, however, my lucky keyboard and even though I occasionally change the equipment attached to it I have kept hold of it for years. And, besides, I’m sort of middle-aged now and I wouldn’t even start to know where to find all the letters if I got a new one...

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And whilst following-up previous posts, thanks to Tony for posting me a link to a flash animation that makes the best use of a squirrel, a penguin, Burt Reynolds and the Duelling Banjos music from Deliverance that I’ve seen this month.

A squirrel, a penguin, Burt Reynolds and some banjo music - this is what the Internet is for ... and grassroots social activism, obviously

I have a soft spot for Deliverance and have been lucky enough to visit the places where it was filmed, including Clayton, Georgia

Strangely enough the residents of Clayton don’t play up their town’s connection with an internationally-renowned film about inbred hillbilly mutant sodomists and I could find no reference to it anywhere. I was, however, pleased to see that one of Clayton’s half dozen stores did stock an extensive range of archery equipment...




And here’s my attempt at recreating Ned Beatty’s part in the film’s famous love scene by the banks of the Chattooga river…


though a strong case could be made that I didn’t need to share that. Ever

A case which hasn't weakened since I last found an excuse to post that photo

And whilst on the subject of the love scene from Deliverance my favourite quote about, not from, the film came from actor Herbert Coward when director John Boorman told him that one of the things his character was going to do was to rape a man...



Coward replied, "I've done worse"


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