distractedbyathing.net

Interesting to see how news organisations report the arrest of 5 people near Sellafield and to watch it unfold via Google News (link).

The story seems to be: routine security procedure of well protected highly secure nuclear establishment routinely picks up people acting a bit suspiciously – as you would expect them to. Not many details have been released by the police – though it is mentioned in some reports that the 5 men are in their 20s and of Bangladeshi descent.

Some orgs though can’t help but tell us we should feel terrorised!!!

e.g. “Nuclear terror alert as UK police arrest five men at Sellafield” and some love to make the link to OBL and AQ by stating things like “no link proven to AQ or OBL”.

Of course it could prove to be a really huge threat to a nuclear plant by a well trained group of killers – maybe they were away on the day they did “don’t wander into routine security patrols with cameras looking suspicious” training.

As others have said in recent years, and I’ll repeat… If the objective of “terrorism” is to terrify the civilian population it seems you don’t even need to have a credible plan or the means to execute it… rather you just need to feed a story to our media and we’ll terrorise ourselves!

Looking forward to see if they are charged let alone convicted of anything serious.

I listened to this morning’s Desert Island Discs with the loathsome Piers Morgan. He comes across as a bright and determined person – clearly his career and successes reflect this. His access to rich and powerful people has enabled him to collect (and polish?)  a number of interesting and genuinely amusing anecdotes (e.g. his interview on the beach with a barefooted Rupert Murdoch prior to being made editor of the News of the World at 28 years old) – his choice of songs was quite interesting and varied – as a PR exercise he did very well.

However – listening to him attempt to justify his role and participation in the stupidest and nastiest parts of the media and his double standards on “privacy” (his is important – other people’s isn’t) -  put me in mind of this from the much missed Kurt Vonnegut back in 2003 – read it all…:

“I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is The Mask of Sanity by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!”

via Kurt Vonnegut vs. the &#@ — In These Times.

Most of us are in no position to make real diagnoses of PP in an individual, especially somebody we only know of via the media. Yet so many of the most successful leaders in government and business appear (to me) to conform to the stereotype.

I think the PP lens is an effective tool for comprehension of incomprehensible times .

The question remains – why do we let these people assume power over us?