Tuesday 2 November 2010

Jerk those knees, Coagulation!

So some bombs were allegedly found on a cargo plane, allegedly from Yemen, and have since been used by the terrorists in government to frighten the crap out of their voters. 'They could have blown up in mid-air. That plane could have come down on YOUR HOUSE!' Just who is doing the terrorising here?

The whole point of terrorism is to make people terrified. The clue is in the title, you don't need to read the job description. If you want to defeat terrorism, the way to do it is to quietly defuse those bombs and say nothing. Nobody is scared, and a group of baffled terrorists are left wondering why their bombs didn't go off and why nobody is running around like headless chickens at the headless chicken all-night rave. Terrifying the population by screaming 'Bomb!' when it's already been dealt with, then threatening everyone with falling plane parts is... well, it's terrorism. It produces exactly what the terrorists intend. They don't need to make bombs that work, they just need to make them look sufficiently bomby and our own government will do the rest for them.

Now, Theresa May (or may not, we'll have to wait and see) has decided to ban unaccompanied freight from Yemen and Somalia. Oh, that's a big help. I mean, it's not as if they'd send someone along with the bomb. That would be suicide. They'd never do that. It would be like some kind of suicidal bomber sort of thing. Totally unheard of.

What do we import from Somalia anyway? I haven't noticed 'Made in Somalia' on anything in the shops. Is there much air freight traffic coming that way? Somalia isn't likely to bomb us. Most of them have family here.

Come to think of it, what do we import from Yemen? Do we really get our toner cartridges from there? Or do they have an exclusive supply deal with American synagogues?

She has also taken the step of banning toner cartridges over 500g from hand luggage on domestic flights. Because every traveller has one in their back pocket, and no terrorist would think of using any other kind of container for their explosives.

In Newspeak, I think this would be rendered as doubleplusunclever. 'Stupid' is far too small a word.

If you were getting on a flight with a laser-printer toner cartridge, the security people will definitely want to look at it because only a total dolt would want to lug that around departures for hours. Why would anyone have one? They are not much use without a laser printer and if you think a leaky pen in your shirt pocket is a disaster, wait till you experience a toner leak in your carry-on bag. Does this spell the end for the hand-delivered toner cartridge business? No. Because there isn't one. Printer cartridges travel by air freight, not as passengers.

I would doubt that anyone has ever had a 500g toner cartridge in their carry-on luggage for any flight anywhere. If they did, I would bet that security would show quite a bit of interest in such an unusual item.

This is it. This is the bottom of the barrel scraped clean through and all the underlying soil removed right down to the bedrock. This is the knee-jerk to end all knee-jerks.

They are now banning things that don't happen.

Next, a ban on time travel and on the sun rising in the West.



Update: Smoking Hot has another take on this.

12 comments:

odd said...

It was also odd that the baddies gave a valid contact phone number and wrote an address on the parcel for a jewish synagogue. I would have thought that the jewish address for a parcel from Yemen would draw attention to the parcel but I'm no expert. If the plan was to blow the box up in mid flight then why put such an address on it ? Why not just Joe Bloggs picked from the phone book ?

Leg-iron said...

They also put a return address on it.

The authorities should really have marked it 'return to sender' and sent it back.

Smoking Hot said...

Anyone in the MSM asking questions? ... nope!

However we do have numerous experts now telling us how sophisticated these devices were :) They just happen to represent companies selling bomb detection equipment!

Anonymous said...

Could somebody please give me a nudge when it's time to get scared? I'm just off for a snooze, now .....

odder said...

Odder still was when the UK declared ( after 6 hours study) that there was no threat they then changed their minds when Barry told them to..

http://www.prisonplanet.com/did-obama-order-british-authorities-to-find-non-existent-ink-bomb.html

JuliaM said...

And we all know why Obumble did that, don't we?

George. said...

Budget increase anyone.

hangemall said...

odd, maybe it has something in common
with this

Dick Puddlecote said...

Spot on, LI, exactly my thoughts when I heard TM announce that yesterday.

Well, actually I laughed out loud. They say this country doesn't make any good sitcoms anymore, but why should we when we have top drawer comedy on a daily basis ... live from Westminster.

Chris said...

The MSM have been leading with this non-story for three or four days now. What is being buried?

* Barry O'Autocue's poor standing in the polls?
* Tefalhead's caving over Europe?
* The fact that the BBC & Sky can't gather real news any more?
* Other?

subrosa said...

Thankfully there are some of us not surprised at this 'incident'. Gave up watching TV on Sunday because I couldn't bear the frenzy the media was stirring.

I'm more under threat from being knee deep in amber beech leaves than this. However, it's a great introduction to our troops moving into Yemen isn't it.

Anonymous said...

UK Imports of goods from Somalia total £40,000 (2008).

http://www.qarannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=8681&Itemid=59

Primary exports: bananas, live animals, fish, hides

(and crap bombs)

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