BBC News: Blair faces terror plans grilling
I don’t believe that the case has been made that these ‘control orders’ are at all necessary.
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Year: 2005
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Threat of Terrorism Redux: Part 2
Noticed this Daily Express headline at the newsagents this morning.
Having had my scare-mongering detector set off I looked for a more reliable source of information but apparently even the BBC is at it.
BBC News: Election ‘could be terror target’
Terrorists might try to target the UK in the run-up to the election, London’s most senior police officer has said. Sir Ian Blair said terror groups would remember the effect of the Madrid bomb on Spain’s general election last year.
Other potential targets were the royal wedding and the UK’s presidency of the European Union and G8, he said. He refused to say if there was specific information about the risk of a pre-poll attack. No 10 was similarly cautious but said the threat was real.
‘Difficult issues’
The comments come after Tony Blair defended his controversial anti-terror proposals, warning that it would be wrong to wait for an attack before acting. Sir Ian told a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority it would be “unwise” to speculate about whether there was specific information about risks of a pre-election attack.
But he said: “Terrorists have long memories. They understand what happened in Madrid and know what the impact of that was on the Spanish electorate. “This year we are responsible for the EU presidency, presidency of the G8, a royal wedding and a general election.
“There are obvious and enormous targets which we have to deal with.” Sir Ian said the debate over anti-terror plans was one for politicians, not the police, who would enforce any new powers.
More…
This ain’t news it is just speculation. There is no intelligence of any specific threat of terrorist attack, this is just yet more fear-mongering by the Government and the police.
Yes with such high-profile events happening in the UK this year the security services should be on heightened alert but it does not mean that the public should be fed this wild speculation. Call me cynical but I believe that this announcement is nothing more than another scare story to help justify the Government’s proposal to hold terror suspects without trial under house arrest indefinitely.
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Threat of Terrorism Redux: Part 1
Many stories from the last few days have concerned the threat of terrorism to the UK and the Government’s response to the perceived threat.
Two days ago during a debate in the House of Commons about the Prevention of Terrorism Bill Brian Sedgemore Labour MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch in his last speech in the house attacked the Government and his party’s backbenchers who have supported the government in their trampling of individual’s liberty.
In their defence, the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary say that they are behaving tyrannically… because they are frightened, and that the rest of us would be frightened too if only we knew what they will not tell us. They preach the politics of fear and ask us to support political incarceration on demand and punishment without trial…
How on earth did a Labour Government get to the point of creating what was described in the House of Lords hearing as a “gulag” at Belmarsh? I remind my hon. Friends that a gulag is a black hole into which people are forcibly directed without hope of ever getting out.
The full transcript of his speech is available here or the speech can be viewed as video here.
Links via Phil Gyford and BoingBoing .
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Free Mojtaba and Arash Day
That is the US navy’s new submarine the USS Jimmy Carter is on it’s way to Washington state where it will based out of Kitsap.
Heavily Armed USS Jimmy Carter in Fleet
By CARA RUBINSKY, Associated Press Writer
GROTON, Conn. – The USS Jimmy Carter entered the Navy’s fleet Saturday as the most heavily armed submarine ever built, and as the last of the Seawolf class of attack subs that the Pentagon ordered during the Cold War’s final years.
The $3.2 billion Jimmy Carter was commissioned Saturday, the first named after a living ex-president. Carter, himself a former submariner during his time in the Navy, was on hand for the ceremony signaling the end of an era in submarining.
The 453-foot, 12,000-ton submarine has a 50-torpedo payload and eight torpedo tubes. And, according to intelligence experts, it can tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them.
Tags: security
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Trio sought by police
Police have released CCTV footage of three men they are still trying to trace following an attack which left a 23-year-old man with facial injuries.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/4233289.stm
I guess they must be the Earth 2 versions of the superheroes.
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Culture Show on Graphic Novels
The BBC’s Culture Show is clearly behind the times and trots out the now cliched report on how comics ain’t just for kids. Look here Middle England there are things called Graphic Novels and they deal with real issues in a serious way using a garphical format.
Graphic novels get real
Far from being stuck in an adolescent fantasy world, the latest trend in graphic novels is autobiographical and intimate. We look at Epileptic, the latest book by David B and trace the history of the real world in comic book form.Random House website: Epileptic
The one British example of this ‘realist’ style of graphic novel that they present is the When the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs which was published over 20 years ago in 1982. This strikes me as bizarre given that there has been a slew of critically acclaimed British comic writers that have come to prominance in the intervening period such as Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.
These writers may have come to prominance mainly due to their superhero comics written for American comic companies but they have also produced great work in the ‘realist’ style. Alan Moore’s From Hell is on the surface a lurid penny dreadful about the Jack the Ripper killings but in my opinion has actually greater depth than anything shows like this normally present as graphic novels that might appeal to the middle classes such as Maus or Palestine.
Even moving into the more fantastical arena for this is where comic books can surpass all other media formats we have superlative stories which should be attracting a wider audience despite the distain that the intelligentsia seems to have for comic books. The satire of the now departed Transmetropolitan is very relevant today and to return to Moore the dystopian vision of the future in his V for Vendetta now seems to have become our reality. But where is V to save us now.
Tags: comics
A confused customer unwittingly lead me to a discovery about Amazon.co.uk a couple of days ago.
She was an American lady that now lives in the UK who had enquired in the past about the possibility of our cinema doing a screening of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. She had been told that there wasn’t a print available of the movie in this country.
She obviously got hold of the wrong end of the stick and thought this to mean that the movie was unavailable in any format in the UK and so asked a relative in the US to send a DVD copy of it from there.
She proudly presented me with said DVD and explained the whole saga of the events to me. Unfortunately it isn’t as simple to show a DVD as she thought and I had to tell her that it wouldn’t be possible. Firstly there is the compatibility issue we would have to find a player that could project a region 1 DVD then in order to screen it to the public we would have to sort out the rights for a public screening with the film distributor. We could have done a private screening for her but that would have meant she would have had to hire the screen which would have been very expensive.
Anyway her claims that there was no copy of the movie in this country piqued my curiosity; surely she was mistaken so I searched for it at Amazon. I did of course find it and at a very reasonable price of £7.97 on DVD.
I also noted that it was available from Amazon Jersey at the lower price of £5.63 (plus £1.24 for delivery).
Amazon Jersey!
I didn’t know there was an Amazon Jersey. Apparently Amazon has decided to exploit a loophole that allows purchases of less than £18 to be imported to the UK without having to pay duty on them. As Jersey does not currently impose VAT, small value items can be thus be purchased for a lower price from Amazon Jersey.
Tags: cinema
Boy brings encyclopaedia to book
A schoolboy has uncovered several mistakes in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica – regarded by readers as an authority on everything.
Lucian George, 12, from north London, found five errors on two of his favourite subjects – central Europe and wildlife – and wrote to complain.
The book’s editor wrote back thanking him for “pointing out several errors and misleading statements”.
I think this is quite ironic given the article written last year concerning the lack of authority of the Wikipedia by Al Fasoldt and former Encyclopædia Britannica Editor in Chief Robert McHenry’s views.
I have to say that the following statement made by Lucien’s father Gabriel George comes as a bit of a surprise to me.
Gabriel, who works as a publishing editor, was not surprised by his son’s discoveries.
He said: “I know how easy it is to make mistakes. Hopefully they can be corrected.
“The encyclopaedia cost me £700 [$1,320] and it’s nice to know you can rely on it.
“It’s a huge work and is full of fascinating information on virtually everything. The other night we had an argument about the depth of the English Channel and all the facts were there.”
I would have thought that he would be quite aggrieved given that he has paid hundreds of pounds for an encyclopaedia that has mistakes that his son discovered in an area where he has some expertise and who knows how many mistakes that his son hasn’t discovered in areas that he has lesser knowledge of.
I’m not sure how he can be sure he can rely upon it now that he is aware of the fact it contains mistakes, or how any argument can now be settled by facts contained within concerning the depth of the English Channel.
This of course does nothing to solve the problems of the Wikipedia but it does undermine the Encyclopædia Britannica’s claim of superior authority.
Tags: books
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