Europhobia: 08/06/2006

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Psycho terrorists acting sensibly? What the hell is the world coming to? The best possible move Hezbollah can make - publicly accept the UN ceasefire plan so that Israel looks unreasonable. And then when rockets continue to be fired south across the border and Israel responds in kind, it can all be blamed on a few bad apples and Israel slagged off even more. Top bit of PR, nutty Islamic killer dudes!

Good point, well made:

"If the threat level can only be raised after a plot has been foiled, just what are they meant to warn us about?"

And the general point responded to likewise.

In utterly unrelated news, Sunny has a good piece over at Comment is Free expanding on ideas I pondered in that Press Gazette piece on blogs vs. columnists - so, why do newspapers hate us bloggers? (He's even managed to attract some intelligent comments amongst the usual maniacs of CiF...)

Thursday, August 10, 2006

Oh, come on...

Yesterday: Major terrorism policy announcement by Home Secretary John Reid

Today: A 'plot to blow up planes' is apparently foiled, and Heathrow airport shut down.

And my first reaction? Utter disbelief and a sigh of resignation.

They've simply cried wolf too many times before - until I see the smoke I won't believe them, and even then I'll have my suspicions. Remember the tanks at Heathrow just before the Iraq war?

Update: For the record, I reckon this plot probably was real - but my first reaction was still "that's bollocks". Desensitising people to this extent through the constant "oooh! Be scared!" announcements is utterly counterproductive.

It does, however, mean that I can carry on with my life utterly unphased by the fact that lots of people want to blow me to shit.

More coherent thoughts: We used to be told that we will not give in to terrorism. We used to be told that we will not change our way of life in the face of this new threat. Now we are told that we MUST change our way of life.

The threat of terrorism is very, very real - you'd have to be a fool to deny it. But the clue is in the name - the point of terrorism is to cause terror.

The terrorists themselves have been remarkably inefficient at scaring the bejeezus out of us, which is their prime modus operandi. They have successfully struck in the West remarkably few times - 9/11, Madrid, 7/7. With the exception of 9/11, the death toll caused by these psychotic maniacs has been, in the grand scheme of things, insignificant, and even the property damage and disruption caused has been relatively minimal.

Instead, it has been our own governments who are terrifying the populace with their constant warnings and announcements of foiled plots; it is our own governments who are causing disruption through airport and railway closures.

Terrorism thrives on the oxygen of publicity. "Martyrs" look forward to being remembered and noticed. So why do we constantly do their PR work for them? Why do our governments keep using their publicity machines to propagate the terror that the terrorists want to cause?

Yes, we obviously need to act quickly and effectively to prevent more attacks. I don't want our governments to sit back and do nothing to prove the point, and I'd far rather we have a few more Forest Gate raids, non-existent Ricin plots "uncovered", and a few more people arrested for allegedly trying to buy radioactive substances that don't even exist than see one single other person killed for the twisted beliefs of a tiny, rabid minority. But I do dispute the effectiveness and sense of the current tactics, which appear to be little more than to ensure that we all have a good scare every few months, supposedly to keep us on our toes.

One thing I do agree with Home Secretary John Reid about is that we can't afford to get complacent. But the more often you get scared, the less impact those scares start to have, and complacency begins to set in.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Following Tim, Justin and (most comprehensively) Unity, I've had a bash at those Janet Street-Porter and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown articles on blogging from the other week, in the Press Gazette (out Thursday, apparently with a lovely piccy of yours truly...)

Thursday update: The comment facility has been fixed.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Blogs, ID Cards

Somewhat busy...

Neeka has a roundup of Ukraine news responses in the wake of President Yuschenko teaming up with ex-President Yanukovych (the guy who supposedly poisoned him). Surely the Orange Revolution is dead? Is this simply yet another temporary alliance, a last-minute cop-out, or another sign of Yuschenko's slow fall from power?

It's not just Ukraine, though. The rest of eastern Europe's also decidedly unstable. So where's the next Vaclav Havel, and what's he going to write about?

Talking of writing, more on blogging as a waste of time from the Economist.

Oh, and as much as I'm getting bored by the civil liberties thing, this can't be ignored (even if the story is a load of rubbish, as I suspect):

"Gordon Brown is planning a massive expansion of the ID cards project that would widen surveillance of everyday life by allowing high-street businesses to share confidential information with police databases."

Meanwhile, over in the Times, another ID story that might explain the Brown one, if true:

"Tony Blair’s identity card scheme could make up to £11 billion in “profits” for the government by imposing a range of additional charges on the public, a confidential Home Office memo claims."

Then again, if Blair's staying for at least another year, as the Sunday Telegraph claims, maybe Gordon won't be held responsible when it's too late to backtrack on the bloody things...

And now off to Fruitstock to listen to a load of bands I've never heard of and probably get pickpocketed... If you want more linky goodness to keep yourself occupied, check out the latest Britblog Roundup.