77 Potty People

I’ve spent what little on-line time I have had these last few days following the debate and discussion about the calls for an inquiry into the London bombings last year.

It’s a curious wee debate being fought out across blogs, forums and media comment sites. Curious partly because the same handful of names keep cropping up and partly because of the divisions that have appeared between those people calling for an inquiry.

In one corner we have the likes of Rachel North – a 7/7 victim and blogger who says things such as…

I do hope that people have not confused the determined, sane, clear-eyed campaign supported by 7/7 survivors and bereaved for a proper inquiry, with the paranoid ramblings of internet people with a macarbre fascination with picking holes into the multi-sourced rolling news coverage of the UK's worst terror attack. Because that would be very tiresome indeed.

And in the other corner we have…

‘Paranoid Internet people’

If I really have to make a choice, and I don’t believe that serves any useful purpose, I’ll stand with the Paranoid Internet People and can make a case for doing so; without insulting people who disagree with me

… unlike some of the people leaving comments underneath the July 7th Truth response to last week’s Guardian article on 7/7 ‘Conspiracy Theories’…

MESSAGE TO GUARDIAN Really, is it not time you started comment moderation? I want to read posts by people who have something to say on a subject like this, not from sub-literate conspiritorialists who come in, spread their cack on the floor, and then demand that everyone else walk in it

Dear Bevereley et al Do you remember all the right wingers during the 90's Clinton era worrying about 'black helicopters' and the UN trying to impose a 'one world government'? You are a latter day mirror image of them

I see the barking mad are off their meds again. Four Islamo-fascists murdered innocent passengers in London and the real sadness is that hell doesn't exist for the killers to burn in eternity.

These are plain ad hominems with a few calls for censorship sprinkled in. I’m all for ad hominen attacks, provided they are funny but they rarely constitute an argument. Calls for an inquiry into 7/7 should stand or fall on their own merits.

-

Internal divisions between the likes of Rachel North and Paranoid Internet People aside, the Number One argument being trundled out against a 7/7 Inquiry is…

A public inquiry into 7/7 would be a waste of resources

Like so many things our government comes out with this argument seems at first sight to be a plausible one.

At first sight

Our police and government are currently laying down a defensive curtain of bullshit in the media, warning us about how overstretched they are in dealing with the Islamic terror threat. This is a handy blocking move in advance of the calls for a public inquiry that will be undoubtedly be made in the context of the 7/7 anniversary in a few days time.

Of course, people who care about such things will recall that the resource argument was used by the head of the Metropolitan Police to hamper the inquiry into the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes last year.

Informed consent is an integral part of democracy. It's not optional and not something that can be dispensed with on the basis of some kind of cost argument.

If we allow ourselves to be fobbed off so easily our public servants could, quite literally, get away with murder.

Another problem with the resource argument is, quite simply, there will never be enough resource. Just take a look at contemporary Israel, or any other nation, past or present, that has invested heavily in becoming a security state.

It’s never enough.

Our government could lock things down as tight as a drum and it won't make any real difference to the ‘Terror Threat’. In fact, the more repressive the measures the more likely they are to generate the issues that lead to terrorism.

And I can't help shaking the suspicion that our government, security forces and media know that very well. It's that or they're plain dumb

Any half-decent inquiry into 7/7 will seek to answer the questions who? how? why?

Right now our government is carrying on as if there is no significant doubt as to the answers to any of these questions. Laws are being changed and people are being locked up and killed, here and overseas, on the basis of assertions that have not been subject to any form of critical scrutiny.

Sure, any inquiry will have its flaws but at the very least it will drag more of the supposed evidence into the light and force some thought about the whys of 7/7 and debate about what we can do to prevent another one.

The thing is, in a peculiar way, it doesn't really matter who carried out the bombings. Be they jihadists or (as some people suspect) spooks, they carried out the bombing to generate a reaction and our government and media obliged by playing along in a very predictable way.

If we, as a nation, responded in a mature and intelligent way to acts of terrorism there wouldn't be any point in carrying them out.

I for one believe that my government and security forces are making a complete dog’s cock of the War on Terror. Whilst, I don’t doubt the integrity of the vast majority of the people involved, everything I see, know and feel tells me that the way we are carrying on as a nation virtually guarantees to make the situation worse and crush hard fought for liberties in the process.

So, application of a little resource now to clarify the who/ how/ why of 7/7 would be resource well spent IMHO

And if that qualifies me as being potty, so be it. Some way, somehow, I’ll manage to live with that.

Profanity pt2

There’s a nice little piece in today’s Londonist that combines two of my favourite subjects – bullshit terrorism countermeasures and profanity…

Opinion: Freedom Of Speech Does Not Extend To Criticising The Police

Given that people will have to realise that there is a problem before they do something about it, the story actually cheered me up quite a bit

and as a special bonus the Londonist article also throws in a link to a video of three hairy men swearing to music

Well, it works for me…

Profanity

Someone noted by way of comment to an earlier post that I employ a fair bit of swearing in my blog.

To be honest I haven’t the faintest fucking idea what the fuck he’s talking about.

I’d be the last person to use gratuitous profanity to make my point. It’s not fucking big and it’s certainly not fucking clever.

Besides, there are plenty of alternatives out there - ( thanks for the link Rahid – that wouldn’t have been a hint would it? ;-) )

\ gets back to watching his Deadwood boxed set :-{

The MI6 - Hasbro connection

Profuse thanks to BigDaddyMerk for pointing out and exquisitely illustrating the striking similarities between the plan of MI6’s Vauxhall headquarters and the Transformers' Autobot logo…

There was me thinking that MI6 was a tentacle of some kind of a covert Illuminati controlled global conspiracy when all along its real backers were Hasbro Inc.

It all makes perfect sense now.

A word of warning to anyone planning to click on the above link to BigDaddyMerk’s fine blog. BigDaddy is currently documenting the life cycle of a rather large boil on his neck and it is (was) a corker. The squeamish will suffer.

People with balloon phobias should also think twice about visiting BDM's blog right now, especially this post here.

Boil photojournalism…?

Ain’t the Internet grand

Spooky Khan

One little follow up thought on today’s Guardian article on ‘bizarre’ 7/7 conspiracy theories, bizarre as in…

Soon, internet chatrooms and blog sites were buzzing with even more bizarre theories: the bombers thought they were delivering drugs but were deceived, set up and murdered; or they thought they were carrying dummy "bombs" designed to test London's defences; or the plot was monitored by any number of secret services, from M15 to the CIA to Mossad, who let it happen in order to foment anti-Muslim feeling.

I’ve just picked up on a little gem of an extract from BBC’s Newshour program

I’ve stuck the audio file here

The clip is just over four minutes long and the interesting bit crops up in the very last 25 seconds

Charles Shoebridge, one of the legions of ex police/ ex army/ ex spook security consultants who have sprung up after 9/11, told Newshour that from the evidence little else can be assumed other than that one the 7/7 bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan, was working for British intelligence.

"The amount of information coming out and the quality of information coming out. The fact that that has been so consistently overlooked it would appear by the security service MI5, to me suggests really only one of two options."

"Either, a) we've got a level of incompetence that would be unusual even for the security services. But b) possibly, and this is a possibility, that this man Khan may even have been working as an informant for the security service."

"It is difficult otherwise to see how it can be that they've so covered his tracks in the interim."

What an odd, dare I say bizarre, thing to say.

-

and whilst I was posting up pictures of MI6's London headquarters, just down the road from me in Vauxhall, I just couldn't help myself and fired up Google Earth to see what it looked like from above.

Given my admitted predilection for seeing symbolism and spooky faces, particularly spooky owl faces, in building plans - a hobby that sometimes gives people cause to doubt my rationality, you cannot imagine how relieved I was to discover that there is nothing spooky at all about the layout of the MI6 building

Yup, no sinister faces or bizarro symbolism there. No sirree

Phew

Adword spotting

My most prolific commentator, A. Nonymous, has just pointed out that when he/she/it clicked on the link to a story about New Labour Cyborg Jo Moore embedded in my earlier post on terrorism Google adwords returned this ‘tailored’ advert…

I think I can trump that. How about this one...

(yes, you're going to have to click on it to see it)

The Miami Seven

Jon Stewart takes a look at the case known to many as "The Miami Seven" in this video clip available here. He examines the careful and decisive evidence presented by Alberto Gonzales:

Gonzales: These individuals wish to wage a quote: "full ground war against the United States."

Stewart: Seven guys? I’m not a general. I am not anyway affiliated with the military academy, but I believe if you were going to wage a full ground war against the United States, you need to field at least as many people as say a softball team.

…

Dept of Justice spokesperson: One of the individuals was familiar with the Sears Tower- had worked in Chicago and had been there-so was familiar with the tower, but in terms of the plans it was more aspirational rather than operational.

Stewart: No weapons, no actual contact with al-Qaeda, but one of them had been to Chicago…

Heh heh. Those silly Americans. You wouldn’t catch us sophisticated British swallowing crap like that from our government

7/7 scepticism hits the mainstream - kind of

There’s an interesting piece in the Guardian today about scepticism over the ‘official account’ of the bombings in London last July. It focuses in particular on the work of Bridget Dunne and the other folks behind the July 7th Truth Campaign.

Bridget and the people behind July 7th Truth are understandably well-pleased that some of the causes for their scepticism have finally received an airing in the mainstream media.

Personally, I’m a little less comfortable with the content and the tone of the article.

Some key questions are mentioned, sure enough, but they are seamlessly mixed-in with ‘straw man’ arguments and vague implications of insanity and malice on the part of those who doubt.

This comment towards the end of the article pretty much gives away the objective of the piece…

‘Indeed, it is natural after an event as cataclysmic and unexpected as 7/7 to want to interrogate what happened. But interrogation is not the same as understanding, and after a certain point you must move on.’

Tell you what Mr Journalist. No. Go fuck yourself. I for one won’t move on. Not until the events of that day are subject to a proper and transparent public investigation.

It may have escaped the attention of the writer of that piece but 7/7 has been used, and continues to be used, to justify a whole raft of new ‘security’ measures and laws. So much for 'moving on'. And if there’s one thing that events like the de Menezes and Forest Gate shootings demonstrate it is that the people currently at the top of our police force have absolutely no compunction about lying - either directly or through unattributable leaks to the press. So, why should anyone assume that official accounts of 7/7 are any different – particularly considering the conspicuous lack of hard evidence from that day?

The anniversary of 7/7 is not far off now and I’m not relishing the prospect of the inevitable, stomach churning, media-manipulated events and speeches designed to promote our Government’s agenda under a veneer of giving a shit about the people who died.

And to anyone who thinks that the people behind and working for New Labour aren't that callously manipulative I've got just two words - 'Jo' and 'Moore'

We are talking about proven liars and spinners here. So, when a journalist writes a piece which implies that people who doubt what the police and government are saying about 7/7 are a little touched in the head I’m inclined to think that he’s a bit of a twat – or, possibly, writing a piece that can be sneaked past an editor who is a bit of a twat.

The good news about today’s Guardian piece is that, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the people at July 7th Truth, it seems that doubts about 7/7 are now so widespread that simply ignoring them doesn’t seem to be working any more.

And it’s not just an Internet thing. Many Londoners I know or have met over the last 12 months, not just Internet junkies, suspect that something isn’t quite right about 7/7 and have told me little anecdotes about things that happened that day. We’re not talking fully-fledged conspiracy theories here, just a nagging suspicion that we are not being told everything about the truth of what really happened last year.

Parallels can be drawn with the ‘9/11 Truth’ movement. First, the media tried to ignore it. Then, once it had grown to a level that couldn’t be ignored, the story was managed through a series of hit pieces that concentrated on the crankiest of theories, presented sceptics as being, at best, ‘eccentric’ or directed readers down blind alleys.

So, even though I think today’s Guardian article was a classic ‘hit piece’ I do take comfort from the fact that it was published at all.

It’s a sign of progress.

Congratulations to the people who made it happen.

Happy birthday from all of us at Sainsburys

I spent last weekend staying at an old friend’s house, using his 40th birthday as an excuse to drink as much of his beer as possible in the available time.

And I did rather well, even if I say so myself.

One thing I couldn’t help noticing between beers was that Sainsbury’s had sent him a better birthday card than I had done

They’d also sent him a comparable present to mine – a voucher for a free bottle of plonk. Actually, Sainsbury’s was probably better as he gets to choose the wine.

For the 20+ years that I have known him my chum has always taken his food seriously and I respect him for that. Though I’m still unconvinced about his conversion to the benefits of Omega-3 in his children’s diet. Maybe if Omega-3 were extracted from pureed elephant I’d buy into it being some kind of brain food, but fish? Since when have fish been renowned for their powers of memory and concentration?

There’s also the small question of concentrated fish extracts being a rich source of other essential nutrients such as cadmium and dioxin which are arguably not the kind of things you’d want to be pouring down your kiddies’ necks.

But I digress

My mate eats, and buys, healthy and given that non–lethal food carries a hefty price premium Sainsbury’s love him for it; so much they’ve taken to sending him birthday cards.

I particularly enjoy the way that his computer-generated card was printed with a faux hand-written font from ‘all of us at Sainsbury’s’

The image of the entire Sainsbury’s management team taking time out to sit around the boardroom table to write out birthday cards brings a lump to my throat.

OK, maybe I’m being a little harsh on Sainsbury’s. After all who would want to receive something like this in the post…

Happy Birthday Customer BRM456787632/A

Based on our extensive records of your purchasing behaviour, our customer-profiling algorithm has identified you as someone who spends a shit load of money in our stores

On the off chance that you are slightly soft in the head and influenced by such things here’s an automatically generated birthday card

Statistical and psychological analysis has established that this is a cost-effective marketing tool

Sincerely

A. Computer

I mention all of this because the sight of that card rammed home to me just how inconsistent I am when it comes to the kind of technology behind that birthday card. I too have a supermarket customer loyalty card. I also have an Oyster Card to pay for my tube and bus travel in London. I have debit and credit cards. I occasionally switch my mobile phone on. And, yes, in spite of all that I still spout on about the fundamental wrongness of the proposed National ID card scheme.

Little by little, all but the most devoted civil libertarians are giving in.

Take the Oyster Card for example. I could continue to pay for my travel with cash but the fares have recently been revamped to make that a much more expensive option.

Consider the supermarkets. Many people will agree that supermarkets already have too much control over the retail business in the UK but they are so powerful and so sophisticated nothing and no one can stand in their way for too long.

There are a couple of fairly easy examples of the power and sophistication of the supermarket chains not too far away from me. In both cases the local council granted building permission for superstores, complete with large car parks, slap-bang on two busy local high streets. Shortly after the supermarkets were completed, the council obligingly placed severe restrictions on parking along both streets, policed by hordes of wardens. The result being that shoppers are literally herded into the supermarkets by supposed public servants.

Nice.

And, of course, you could refuse a supermarket loyalty card once you've been herded into the store but you effectively end up paying more for your food as you subsidise discounts to people who do accept the cards.

And once you start using the card the supermarket gets access to more information about what’s really going on in your life than any National ID card, travel pass, mobile phone log or, ahem, record of your surfing habits.

Think about how much someone can find out about you just by examining the contents of your shopping basket, week in week out.

And the more things the supermarkets sell the more complete their record of individual lives is becoming.

I’m not happy about that.

Or maybe I’m reading too much in a simple birthday card

Whatever, I'm off to my local Tescos to buy some Afro styling mousse and change my year of birth on their database to 1928. Let's see what they make of that.

Pimp my ride - Kennington style

Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom in my neck of the woods.

I bumped into this guy and his rather special customised bicycle earlier today and I’m still giggling...

The photo really doesn’t do it justice

Fine work