Airport staff issued a security warning after a passenger tried to carry pease pudding on to a plane. The traditional northern snack – made from boiled split peas and ham fat – was confiscated from hand luggage at Newcastle International airport. It was part of the 450 litres of banned liquids seized by staff each day, including suntan lotion and jars of Marmite. Chris Davis, the head of operations, said it was costing the airport a fortune in recycling and waste disposal. He said: "We're asking our customers to make sure they're aware of what can and can't be taken through the security search in their hand luggage."
That was my mother-in-law, with the pease pudding. Really.
- Music:B-52's
"All The Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise The Minute They Die That They Were Suckers)"
Which makes me think I should give him more of my time again...
I take his points about a "rationalist/skeptical" worldview being as comforting as a paranoid/conspiracy worldview, and that the USA has indulged in conspiracy before - even his point about Sep 11 being used as an excuse to attack Iraq.
But when he says "For myself, I have no idea what happened, because I have no more idea of how the business-intelligence-political nexus works than I have about what chess grandmasters are up to when they are staring at the board, looking all thoughtful." he loses me.
I don't know exactly what happened but given the evidence of my own eyes, countless testimonies and other hard scientific evidence, I have reached the conclusion that a group of Islamist terrorists, by exploiting lax security, hijacked aeroplanes and flew them into buildings, murdering thousands. Hind seems to be suggesting that even this is "unknowable"...and I suppose in a strict philosphical "does-this-table-exist" sense it is. But it gets us nowhere.
To use Hind's reasoning, I don't understand an awful lot about philosphy, but I recognise po-mo obfuscation when I see it. And if conspiracy breeds on anything it's the view that any opinion is equally valid.
(Due to the subject matter, anonymous comments are banned)
"There was absolutely no panic and I heard one customer say after the first bang they thought a light bulb had popped"
It's worth reading despite the fact that Amis seems to be everywhere at the moment, because Hari's approach is a lot more sympathetic than the recent accusations of Eagleton et al, but nevertheless challenges head-on some of Amis's more bizarre pronouncements (especially his advocation of Mark Steyn)
The interview has more than a couple of cringeworthy sections, where Amis worryingly seems to consider Muslims to be one monolithic block (something many Muslims also do, it should be pointed out) but also bits like this, where he's dead right:-
"Look at London, this amazing multi-racial city, but there’s a few miserable bastards, who through an absolutely vile brew of dreams of impotence, or omnipotence, and sadism, and the love of blood and sadism and horror, are going to ruin it for us. It wasn’t just about protecting white people. A multi-racial society is very vulnerable to that kind of thing."
But I suspect that won't be the quote whizzing round the blogs today...
"We were visited by Katherine Hibbert who interviewed us regarding our 9/11 activism and the reasons and facts behind the need for a new investigation. We all had lots of talking points and spoke entirely on non-controversial facts and uncomfortable, unanswered questions provided by the family members.
Not once did we lay blame on the US government, mention controlled demolition of the Twin Towers, or even speak of Scholars for 9/11 Truth. We spoke in detail about anomolies like WTC7, the PNAC document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses", which actually states a lot more than the need for "a new Pearl Harbor" and the only group we mentioned was Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
"We Are Change UK" aren't conspiracy theorists at all, they're just asking awkward questions, and
"We're trying to distance ourselves from the conspiracy theorist nuts who believe that aliens did it, who accuse the Jews. We're not trying to push a theory"
Really? From this picture of the "We Are Change UK Team" having a fine old time at Notting Hill Carnival, they look like they've made their minds up already-
On the back of my own opinions and excellent pieces like David Aaronovitch's, I've come down on the side of the camp that believe that nothing will be solved by his sacking.
Anthony Cox comes from an intriguing angle based around his own experience in medicine -
"While the London Met has tragically shot one man dead on the London Underground, the NHS has been calculated to kill 30,000 patients a year due to medical error. That’s about 80 people a day, killed by NHS staff making mistakes with prescriptions, scalpels and other complex procedures. While the desire to continue to blame individuals still exists, especially with regard to manslaughter charges and medical staff, the NHS has attempted to move away from a blame culture towards an open learning culture to give a higher reliability of service. Rather than criticising individuals, it has been argued that the focus should be on systems."
I strongly recommend you read the whole article.
It isn't though, is it?
"raining shibboleths down with great fury: Israel, they cried. What about Israel? Won't somebody think of the Palestinians! This, of course, despite the fact that I don't ever remember Amis or Anthony saying anything anti-Palestinian. Remember - this is the liberal world, where disagreeing with Islamism is the same as hating Palestinians. Because, in this world, Palestinians aren't people - they're a rhetorical device. You'll score points in every argument as soon as you mention them."...
EDIT: Actually I last found Chris Morris funny around the time of Brass Eye, which seems a long time ago now...
I'm not cutting and pasting - I just recommend it.
EDIT: It almost goes without saying that my recommendation does not extend to the grotesquely idiotic comments following it - "Dear Ms Pearl.." etc
2. I've just read the Martin Amis article printed in The Times on September 11;. It's got some people annoyed, but I rather liked it. He does write well.
3. Yesterday I released the third mouse caught in our humane trap and sent it scuttling down the street. In the cold and all, aren't I cruel?
4. It is cold, isn't it?
5. V*rgin Meagrestores are to to be no more, sold off and rebranded as "Zavvi" (ugh)- "We will deliver a new brand that lives and breathes entertainment and delivers high quality enthusiastic service to existing and new customers," Mr Douglas said
Translation: "We will close all our stores within one year" (gag copyright
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
bad_cb)6. I've been listening a lot to "Herd of Instinct" by "O" Rang a lot recently, which I got for 10p in Deptford whilst unsuccesfully trying to find anything interesting at Deptford X.
- Music:B52s
"...This seems to me to be what distinguishes sceptics from troofers. Sceptics should probe for "inconsistencies in the official narrative", but then apply a "balance of probabilities" test with the alternative explanations on offer. Troofers demand "proof beyond all reasonable doubt" because they already have another view fixed in their minds. Most of us already know the telltale signs when someone tells us that they are "increasingly troubled by some of the details about how many people actually died in the Holocaust" and shut the conversation down immediately. I think that we probably need to start treating 9/11 conspiracy theorists in a similar way."
I get to see this Democracy Now "Loose Change vs Popular Mechanics" video -
Whilst Peter Tatchell is far from a "swivel-eyed loon", the chap in the freeze-frame above certainly is!
Bin Laden Still Trapped In Underground Bunker Behind Wall Of Rubble With Only Webcam, Grecian 2000, And “Comment Is Free” For Company
Read.
Taking the two overplayed explanations for what's going on - "blowback" from our foreign policy, and the growth of Islamist jihadi extremism, he finds possible ways forward-
"So what can we do to defuse the ticking bomb of British jihadism? On all fronts, the solution lies not in abandoning the values of liberal democracy, but in adhering to them much more scrupulously. If we restrain our leaders whenever they try to violate our values by using torture, or chemical weapons, or arming tyrants - indeed, if we put them on trial for it - we will choke off the more obvious blowback. But that's not enough. We also need to unpick the totalitarian ideology of jihadism by democratically opening up Islamic theology, so that over a generation, fewer and fewer young men can convince themselves they are "good Muslims" when they murder innocents."
This kind of balanced and sensible view was sadly entirely absent from the phone-in on Radio 5 (which are sometimes illuminating in a kind of man-on-the-street way, and different to most phone-ins as the the presenter doesn't have an agenda of his own). This morning the airwaves were full of "we deserve it" types, nihilistic doom mongerers, BNP loons, people drawing pointless analogies to the IRA, and frankly, the sort of people whose phone calls should have been traced and handed over to the police. Nearly everybody on the show, for hugely different reasons, was very angry, and it made for extremely depressing listening.
At least until the sport coverage took over, which for a sport-hater like me, is even more depressing.
Cheered up by the cartoon in The Times showing two jittery blokes in a pub, as the TV screams "Terror Alert: Critical" on ei saying to the other
"At least under Blair you could have a cigarette to calm your nerves"
This one, headed "Why should we have to justify ourselves to the people who want to bomb us?" is one of those.
She identifies the problem that I found with Melanie Philips' book (well, one of them) in that the right-wing commentators actually have some sympathy with the views of the jihadists- they share their disgust with the modern "liberal" world. Bennett also finds some other peculiar points of agreement- (and not just an annoyance with the war or with Israel)
"Even if it does not want them to be killed, the Daily Mail is very upset about women who enjoy ending their evenings with their knickers showing, being sick in the gutter. Even if they don't want to wear one themselves, many liberal feminists are happy to make believe that the male-enforced hijab is a modest, feminine response to a materialist, oversexualised society that judges women by their appearance. And of course, like lots of things in this decadent society, that is not very nice. Many of us share the Crawley terrorists' dislike of Bluewater. But that is not to say we have any interest in their plans to improve it."
As I say- worth reading. This recommendation doesn't apply to the drivel in the comments of course...
- Location:London
For a start, he's pretty obviously on the right side of the debate on Climate Change, secondly, I was rather taken by a quote of his which appears in Nick Cohen's book, ("is totalitarianism the only means of eliminating capitalism? If so, and if, as almost all of us profess to do, we abhor totalitarianism, can we continue to call ourselves anti-capitalists? If there is no humane and democratic answer to the question of what a world without capitalism would look like, then should we not abandon the pursuit of unicorns, and concentrate on capturing and taming the beast whose den we already inhabit")...and thirdly, for this superb attack on the utter nonsense of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and in particular "Loose Change" a film I've had the misfortune of watching, and which is threatening to be this years "Blair Witch Project", only with a more preposterous plot.
"The film's greatest flaw is this: the men who made it are still alive. If the US government is running an all-knowing, all-encompassing conspiracy, why did it not snuff them out long ago? There is only one possible explanation. They are in fact agents of the Bush regime, employed to distract people from its real abuses of power. This, if you are inclined to believe such stories, is surely a more plausible theory than the one proposed in Loose Change"
Read it, then chortle at the swivel-eyed loons commenting afterwards-
"George
Someday you may be sorry you wrote this.
WTC7 was a controlled demo job. For sure.
WTC one and two were clearly blown to bits by high explosives.
The new pearl harbour.
Andy"
Eh, Pearl Harbour??
Anyway, I don't think George will regret it - a bit of sensible distancing from the ultra-loons is a very wise move indeed.
Apparently David Lynch buys into this rubbish too - how very disappointing
In the Lake District, the suspects were observed by the Police -
Officers watched the men for nearly three hours, and photographed them wearing rucksacks, running up and down, and engaged in prayer.
Preposterously, on the BBC News last night it was suggested that this will be a great embarrassment to the police (assuming, **cough**, that they're found guilty), because they hadn't acted on this vital information.
But what in heaven's name could they have done? Even in this terrifying Blairite Police State Dystopia (TM), I don't think you can be arrested for running up and down hills a bit...
a terrorist, yesterday
Full details here.
Then I'm dashing off to dance the morris at the Tudaor Barn in Eltham...
"...the 70-year-old arrived at the Jabaliya refugee camp, not far from her home in the northern Gaza strip, in the final days of a major Israeli military incursion. She walked towards a group of soldiers. They called her to stop a little way off. One soldier, thinking she looked suspicious, threw a stun grenade. She detonated the belt of explosives around her waist, tearing her body to pieces and slightly injuring three soldiers."
The article lacked the finger pointing ranting reportage of Pilger and was all the better for it, capturing something of the sheer pointless of the violence, and a vaguest hint of hope...
"But although the voice of militancy is often the most powerful in Palestinian society, it is by no means the future everybody sees. There are many who consider the past six years of fighting as a great setback and who argue for negotiations, not war"
More on these please.
