How do you hide an elephant?
I don’t know. How do you hide an elephant?
Paint his balls red and put him up in an cherry tree.
WTF!?
Did you ever see an elephant in a cherry tree? It works, doesn't it?
Being searched is fun!!!
If I've posted it before I've posted it five or six times, I don't do airport security very well and I am prone to repeat myself when extolling its virtues...
I had the misfortune to have to travel through Gatwick and be subject to the improved British airport security procedures a few days ago
I have a copy of the revised liquid terror prevention procedures sitting here next to me. I’d scan them but, apparently, they’re subject to BAA copyright.
Well, we wouldn’t want anyone else plagiarising them and pretending that they’re original work would we?
Important Information ©
'Put that gel-saturated quiff down and move slowly away from the aircraft...'
As I've posted before, a few years ago a little white-haired old lady was passing through security at Stansted ahead of me and the person searching her hand luggage pulled out two bottles of brown sauce. The old dear looked a bit worried and asked ‘Can’t I take these on the plane?’ and the official said ‘No, not two bottles. You can only take one bottle of sauce with you’, he paused for comic effect and then put them both back into her bag.
How we all laughed.
Not any more though. Now the suspect terrorist bitch-whore would have to be strip-searched and then punished for not adhering to security procedures.
Take two bottles into the airliner?
Only if you want a very sore bottom
Anyway, the queue for the security check at Gatwick took well over an hour. There were conga lines of thousands of people snaking all around the airport. By the time I had passed the metal detector I had already been photographed (‘guaranteed to be erased after 24 hours’), I was holding a plastic bag filled with personal effects in the air, I was shoe-less, belt-less and had been grope-searched.
A voice on a Tannoy was periodically haranguing the waiting passengers; telling them that they would be sent to the back of their queues if they failed to comply with the new requirements to the letter.
All in all, I was feeling just a teensy wee bit violated.
As was the Other Half and a woman with a young child behind her. Both complained about some minor aspect of the procedure whilst going through the detector and, surprise surprise, both were subject to a completely random and meticulous bag search – pour encourager les autres no doubt
Whilst being subject to the completely-random-bag-search, Herself asked the searcher a few questions about the bag search process, particularly given that the bag had just passed through an X ray machine, and was given a series of stupefyingly lame answers – the gist of them were
- We’re looking for (presumably X ray proof) hand guns, knives and mysterious, unspecified dangerous items
- We are only doing our job. If you have a problem with that phone the government (to which Herself replied 'do you think I voted for them!!?')
- It’s for your safety you idiot
I muttered something to Missus along the lines of ‘Whoo, an extra five minutes having your bag searched is such a deterrent to complaining after you’ve spent an hour and a half in a queue’. For my sins I was treated to the following exchange with another security official -
‘What did you just say’
‘None of your business – I was talking to my girlfriend not to you’
‘Stop moaning’
‘You’re not the fucking Law so don’t try and give me orders’
‘I said stop moaning and if you swear again I can send you to the back of the line and you’ll miss your flight. That I CAN do!’
The jumped-up little twat was, of course, correct. I had used a rude word in response to him trying to tell me what to do. I had become an abusive passenger. And the sooner airport security staff are issued with tasers to deal with lunatics like me the better.
I wouldn’t have missed the experience for the world - random bag searches for people who complain and repeated threats to bounce you off your flight if you don’t like being given orders.
And all for our own good.
Oh yes
Later, on my way back to the UK from Italy, passengers travelling to the UK from Milan were subject to separate screening procedures to the rest of Europe because my country is insane.
The environment in Gatwick last week was such that the people all around me would have stood on one leg and sung along to the Laughing Gnome if they were told to. Forget moaning about the silly things religions tell their followers to believe and do – the State is more than up to speed with obedience training for the masses.
Nobody is going to storm a plane armed with sewing kits and nail clippers and if there really are terrorists set on blowing up large numbers of people they’ll manage it – if not on a plane, then on a train, or a football stadium, or a theatre.
After all, how many times have we been told that another terrorist incident is inevitable?
Airport security has always been a balancing act and now it's just plain mental
Ha! You missed that didn't you, you bastards
The aircraft is now mine! Mine I tell you!
At least all this airport security nonsense has taught me the answer to a question that bugged me for a long time. I always wondered why all those people who were stripped of personal belongings, separated from loved ones, sorted into groups and marched onto trains towards the camps in WW2 submitted to that treatment so passively. They outnumbered their guards many fold and could have rushed them easily. But they didn’t.
And the sad thing is that it often only takes one person to stop the nonsense, just one...
A father and his eight-year-old son got off a train at Blackpool on a Friday evening two weeks ago to be confronted by a number of police officers moving passengers towards a scanner. There was a mildly threatening manner about them and it was clear that they expected everyone to pass through the scanner, which they said was being used to search for knives.
The man, whose name is Danny, quietly told the police that unless they had a very good reason, he would not be searched. One or two passengers hesitated, then joined him in refusing to go through the scanner. The police were clearly disgruntled, but couldn't do anything because Danny was right: they had to have reasonable grounds for suspecting he was carrying a knife in order to search him. 'I am not some rabid left winger or civil libertarian,' he wrote in an email to me. 'It just seems we are allowing a police state to be developed without an argument.' On the phone, he seemed to modify this by saying that the police behaviour had been oppressive.
Stop moaning Danny – they were only following orders
-
For completeness’ sake
The Laughing Gnome by David Bowie
I was walking down the High Street
When I heard footsteps behind me
And there was a little old man (Hello)
In scarlet and grey, shuffling away (laughter)
Well he trotted back to my house
And he sat beside the telly (Oaah..)
With his tiny hands on his tummy
Chuckling away, laughing all day (laughter)
Oh, I ought to report you to the Gnome office
(Gnome Office)
Yes
(Hahahahaha)
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me"
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me"
Said the laughing Gnome
etc etc
Every now and then I make a large order from Amazon for books that I've added to my wish list over the months.
I've just put together my latest order. Sadly, one of the books on my wish list is a little too rich for my blood...
Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping (Hardcover) (Used) by Frank Kitson
Used Price: from £361.98
In one corner of the screen there's a little tick graphic thoughtfully located next to the words - 'Low Price'
Yes, very funny
Frank Kitson is, of course, the British Army officer who developed the tactic of using ‘pseudo-gangs’ to infiltrate the native insurgency movement in Kenya in the 1950s. The pseudo-gang tactic involved dressing up British officers, mercenaries and ‘turned’ insurgents as real insurgents then carrying out assassinations, atrocities and other ‘wet work’ and blaming it on the insurgents.
Frank and his ideas were also big in Malaya, Aden, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and only Frank and his chums know where else.
There was a time when people like Frank and other Special Services operatives would write freely about this sort of activity. In fact, tales of derring-do involving British Officers dressing up as fuzzy wuzzies and outfoxing the heathen hordes were staple fare in the first half of the 20th century.
'I'm sorry darling, I've just received four feathers inthe post. It looks like I'm going have to travel around Egyptdressed as a wog to restore my family honour...'
Never let it be said that the gentlemen of our Ruling Classes ever pass up on an opportunity to prance around in long flowing garments, play-act and indulge in risky activities. I suspect it's a private school thing.
Now, for reasons that I couldn’t possibly even start to fathom, no sirree, nobody in the mainstream is writing books about the British Security forces and their agents dressing up as fuzzy wuzzies and committing acts of terror.
That’s why the old ones are selling for four hundred quid.
Oh the joys of cultural amnesia.
Kurt Vonnedude
When not blaming It for all the World's ills, another favourite, and all-pervasive, gag used to fog thought or debate about important issues is the old...
You're either with Us or against Us
...routine
And the gag works best of all if the supposed dichotomy is presented in such a way that people will be damned for the company they keep if they favour the 'wrong', or should I say unfashionable, option.
So, if you don't buy into the particular Global Warming paradigm being thrust down our necks well then you just have to be an apologist for the oil industry
You think the Global War on Terror is horseshit? Well, obviously, you just luuuuuuurve terrorists
and my personal favourite...
If you reject Darwinism then you must be a fundamentalist crazy. Or, more perniciously, you are a fool and your doubts only serve to further the agenda of fundamentalist crazies. Best shut up and come over to the 'Our' side, even if you think Darwinism is crap.
The output of the human brain, the most wondrous object in the known universe, reduced to a series of binary decisions. Even simpler than a traffic light.
An impressive achievement
If you're a dick
And so, whenever I encounter someone who phrases issues along the lines of 'With Us or against Us' the trusty old 'Dick-O-Meter' flashes into overdrive.
Sorry, believing that life sprung up spontaneously from inert sludge, a feat that no-one has ever come near to replicating in a lab, is just as irrational and faith-driven as believing that G-d did it. And demanding that people must believe in one or the other doesn't make it any less so.
Bogus certainty about bogus dichotomies is responsible for more death and suffering than any individual religious or political ideology.
You could do away with all religions and all political ideologies tomorrow and the dicks in charge would still find bullshit issues to divide us, to be certain about and to kill each other over. Humanity's inanate appetite for tribalism is partly responsible but it also has to be said that there are a lot of people out there who simply find it easier to hurt each other rather than think things through on their own,
There's an audio of a cracking interview with Kurt Vonnegut available on this page here. The first time I heard it I burst out laughing. I suspect Vonnegut had a chuckle himself afterwards. Vonnegut is well known for being a secular humanist so he must be part of the herd of independent minds that believes in Darwinian Evolution, right?
Wrong
clank clank whirrr wibble
does not compute
errr.....
Here's a transcript of the best bit, at the end of the interview-
VONNEGUT: Where you can see tribal behavior now is in this business about teaching evolution in a science class and intelligent design. It’s the scientists themselves are behaving tribally.
INSKEEP: How are the scientists behaving tribally?
VONNEGUT: They say, you know, about evolution, it surely happened because their fossil record shows that. But look, my body and your body are miracles of design. Scientists are pretending they have the answer as how we got this way when natural selection couldn’t possibly have produced such machines.
INSKEEP: Does that mean you would favor teaching intelligent design in the classroom?
VONNEGUT: Look, if it’s what we’re thinking about all the time; if I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it’d be on my mind all the time as to how the hell we really got this way. It’s a perfectly natural human thought and, okay, if you go into the science class you can’t think this? Well, alright, as soon as you leave you can start thinking about it again without giving aid and comfort to the lunatic fringe of the Christian religion. Also, I think that, you know, it’s tribal behavior. I don’t think that Pat Robertson, for instance, doubts that we evolved. He is simply representing a tribe.
INSKEEP: There are tribes on both sides here in your view?
VONNEGUT: Yes.
INSKEEP: May I ask what tribes, if any, you have belonged to over the years?
VONNEGUT: Well, it’s an ancestral tribe. These were immigrants from north of Germany who came here about the time of the Civil War, but anyway, these people called themselves free thinkers. They were impressed, incidentally, by Darwin. They’re called Humanists now: people who aren’t so sure that the Bible is the Word of God.
INSKEEP: Who are denounced by some religious people as secular humanists?
VONNEGUT: Well, that’s exactly what I am. The trouble with being a secular humanist is that we don’t have a congregation. We don’t meet, so it’s a very flimsy tribe, but there’s a wonderful quotation from Nietzsche. Nietzsche said, Only a person of deep faith can afford the luxury of skepticism. Something perfectly wonderful is going on. I do not doubt it, but the explanations I hear do not satisfy me.
I like Kurt Vonnegut
Good news for fans of E. Nesbit's childrens stories
It emerged yesterday
According to the Guardian
British intelligence officials believe that al-Qaida is determined to attack the UK with a nuclear weapon, it emerged yesterday. The announcement, from an officially organised Foreign Office counter-terrorism briefing for the media, was the latest in a series of bleak assessments by senior officials and ministers about the terrorist threat facing Britain.
It has been a very busy sand-fairy lately and has been emerging all over the place.
As well as emerging, It has also been reported on numerous occasions
I used to write about It in business reports all the time. Usually as a cop out when I didn't want to name the person reponsible for a fuck up because I was afraid of them. So, I blamed It instead - or, rather, It was blamed
Poor, poor, much-maligned It. It is far too passive for It's own good and everyone, especially journalists and politicians, takes advantage of It
Sorry, my mistake, I should have said It is taken advantage of.
Sometimes, when I’m not being outraged by the bogus War on Terror, I like to take a little time out and get really fucked off with other stuff
The New Environmentalism for example
It’s not that I hate trees, or butterflies, or bunnies, or fluffy little lambkins, or any other natural things.
Far from it. Many natural things are absolutely delicious and pictures of them, cooked or uncooked, can make for great screensavers.
It's beautiful!!! Aaaaaaaaaaargh!!!
What I do dislike is the whiff of the same kind of forces and agendas rolling off contemporary environmentalism that I can smell emanating from the War on Poverty, the War on Terror and all the other BS that’s being rammed down gullible throats.
The, dare I say it, ‘Final Solutions’ being advocated for all of these problems share very similar characteristics.
And I wouldn’t be the first person to point out that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian animal lover who believed in complementary medicine and the virtues of a pastoral life. A strong leader who took a firm line on domestic and international terrorism. A man who sought to unite nations and a patron of science who adopted a rationalist, Darwinian approach to social issues such as population control and genetic fitness.
He was also responsible for the death and enslavement of fucking millions of people.
And he was not, is not, the only person to advocate that particular view of how things should be. Far from it.
\ big subject
If only Adolf had spent a little less money on tanks and a little more money on buying newspapers, politicians, NGOs and scientific 'research' at an international instead of just at a national level he would have been laughing.
Anyway, I was reading up on the Dark Side of Environmentalism over the last few days when I came across this article in Wikipedia
The Georgia Guidestones
How come I’d never heard of these before? For a man with an interest in esoteric belief systems and who has also devoted much of his holiday time over the last 10 years to motoring around America in search of the world’s largest this and world’s largest that...
e.g. World’s largest Ten Commandments (old version)
...discovering that I’d missed something quite as special as these…
...came as a heavy blow
The aesthetic appeal of a New Stone Henge combined with Ten New Commandments for the Age of Reason plus a mysterious, shady origin and a possible connection with the Illuminati.
Fantastic
And what a fine set of commandments they are
1. Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2. Guide reproduction wisely - improving fitness and diversity.
3. Unite humanity with a living new language.
4. Rule passion - faith - tradition - and all things with tempered reason.
5. Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6. Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7. Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8. Balance personal rights with social duties.
9. Prize truth - beauty - love - seeking harmony with the infinite.
10. Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature.
They sound great don’t they
After all, who in their right mind would have a problem with massive depopulation and One World Government.
The scary thing is that there is a growing number of idiots out there who’d buy into this insanity.
Old Adolf would feel right at home.
I just received this in my inbox
Hi,
i read your blog on Mark urban - you may interested on the following event
Is Islam a Threat to The West?
In a YouGov survey in August 2006 53% of those questioned felt that Islam and Muslims posed a threat to Western liberal democracy.
Why do such a large number feel this is so?
Has the frequently negative media attention upon Islam and Muslims been a cause of creating this fear and mistrust in society?
Or have sensitivities raised about reporting controversial issues meant the free criticism and debate has been curtailed?
Does talking about these issues in the emotive press headlines, generated by such a poll increase alienation or help understand it?
To discuss this and other issues Dialogue with Islam have invited the following distinguished panel
Charles Moore, former Editor of Daily Telegraph
James O’ Brien, LBC Radio Presenter
Humera Khan, An Nisa Society,
Abdul-Raheem Green, Regents Park Mosque
Chair: Mark Urban, Diplomatic Editor of BBC Newsnight
Wednesday 15th November 2006
Time: 6.15pm
Venue: Conway Hall,
25 Red Lion Square,
London WC1
Tube: Holborn
Tickets £3 reservation (by email or phone) or £5 at the door.
Phone: 07983749252
Email: dialogue_with_islam@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.dialoguewithislam.org
My original post about Mark Urban (not linked or quoted because I've just reread it and it's boring) was prompted by old Mark acting like a spooky wee bastard immediately after the 7/7 bombings - popping onto Newsnight most nights, quoting his unidentified contacts in the security forces and doing his bit to gently ease media coverage of the 7/7 story away from any suggestion that the four alleged bombers may have been patsies.
What's particularly funny to me is the fact that I just Googled 'Mark Urban' and my original blog post came up as number three in the results
Hi Mark!
I still think you're a spooky wee bastard
And as for the answer to the question...
Why do such a large number of people feel that Islam is a threat to the West?
... it isn't particularly tricky and is the same as the answer to these other, not entirely unrelated, questions -
- Why did such large numbers of people feel that the Soviet Union was a threat to the West?
- Why did such large numbers of people feel that Vietnam was a threat to the West?
- Why will such large numbers of people feel that China is a threat to the West?
i.e. Because they were/ are/ will be told to
A more interesting question would be -
Why are such large numbers of people being told to feel that Islam is a threat to the West?
... lots of very interesting answers to that particular poser. I reckon Mark could come up with one or two.
City-wide ASBO - Birmingham 2006
A frequent criticism of orthodox, traditional religions is that many of the requirements of their faith are either bizarre or old-fashioned.
I’m not talking about belief in a bearded man in the sky or an afterlife here, I’m referring to the dress, dietary and other ‘lifestyle’ specifications
Stuff like…
- The use of the veil in Islam
- The ban on alcohol in Islam
- Separation of meat and dairy in Judaism
- The pork thing in both
These laws were, of course, written for people living a particular lifestyle, in a particular place, at a particular time and probably made a lot of sense when they were written.
And they probably went a long way in preventing Mustafa or Benjamin falling prey to listeria, or a tapeworm, or dying from heat stroke after one beer too many, or developing lustful thoughts about his best mate’s wife whilst his best mate was away on a trade caravan for three months.
As times move on reformers within faiths could argue that what with advances like air conditioning and low alcohol lagers you probably could bend some of the old laws a little whilst still being faithful to the original spirit of your religion.
Others believers would argue that if you start bending one rule where do you stop? And besides, some of the old laws retain a moral as well as a practical element and should be retained.
Whatever, it’s all very complicated.
Anyway, what’s always tickled me about this business is the thought that one day, by some bizarre quirk of circumstances, a new religion could spring up that incorporates contemporary legislation as an integral part of its belief system. What if, for instance, Tony Blair was correct all along and he really does turn out to be the new Messiah? Would that mean in 2,000 years time that the New New Testament would include a book devoted to the Acts of His Disciples? Acts such as Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.
The Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 and The Food Standards Act 1999 are particular personal favourites and guaranteed page-turners.
I only mention all this because someone just forwarded me an email that fits right in with my line of thinking…
I have been thinking about ASBOs. They have been introduced by a rather strange government in strange times, when everyone and everything is being demonised. However this is now back-firing as the 'evil youth' are now taking them as badges of honour, according to the press.
To get around the idea of an ASBO as a label as Badge of Honour, we just need to think in a 'different' way, bear with me:
If everyone was allocated an ASBO at birth along with the birth certificate, lets say born with 'Original ASBO', then we all would be redeemable.
Then we introduce a points system whereby meritorious behaviour would deduct ASBO points, and bad behaviour would re-credit us with ASBO points. This would mean that everyone in society would be somewhere on the ASBO scale, publishable on the internet on ASBO League Tables.
We then need a way for us all to be judged by the overseers of the ASBO scales. This role could be carried out by an agency of the government, probably in some PFI arrangement. To make sure that the system is not open to abuse, behaviour could only be 'judged' if it was verifiable by CCTV coverage.
A system of judging good and bad behaviour could be monitored by focus groups, so that it was a constantly moveable target depending on the social fashions of the day, they could then feedback to the judging panel. This would mean that the social order was always adapting itself to the latest agenda set by the media.
Naturally we would all need to carry a chip and PIN ID card that would contain our ASBO balance on it, that could be scanned when attending any public forum such as classical concerts and football matches, and allocate us seating in the arena accordingly.
All of this would be need to be overseen by a Head of Government who felt that he/she had the ability to make difficult decisions on all of our behalf, based on firm personal convictions.
Is this idea good or what?
Yes, a good idea, but I still think my combined National ID / Citizen-Shopper Loyalty card is better
And thank you Noel for sending me that article from The Press about last weekend's Bonfire Night holocaust in New Zealand, including the memorable line...
The Government had warned that people should be on their best behaviour this year if they did not want to have their access to fireworks restricted
And there was me thinking that once I finally manage migrate over there I wouldn't have anything to moan about ever again
\not
