I'm your boogeyman and I'm here to frighten the tar out of you tonight!
And so 2010 has kicked off with a familiar damp squib, as the “failed underpant bomber” – or “fub”, which is, I believe the noise that his “device” made – has overcooked his meat and two veg, leading to a very convenient new boogeyman to frighten us all with: Yemen. The curiously tenuous link that he might have been recruited there has served a number of very convenient purposes: it introduces a new “enemy”, because we’re all tired of the old ones and starting to become sceptical about them; and it ratchets up the fear levels again, giving the bunch of nasty bullies another excuse to do the terrorists work for them by removing all vestiges of our freedom in the name of our safety. It’s also very close to the Saudis and gives them a coded warning that we’re keeping an eye on the real source of all our misery (that we can’t do anything about, because the buggers control all our oil!) and it neatly deflects the fact that the “fub” was probably actually turned into a “wannabe” terrorist in Britain.
So, all the boxes have been ticked, we have a new “threat”, we can keep ignoring the real threats, our politicians get to act all tough and decisive, purveyors of security theatre “woo” get to make millions more out of the taxpayer and travellers get to feel like their lives are even less pleasant and less secure, and the newspapers get to sell more copy.
Yes, folks, already Britain in 2010 looks reassuringly familiar to those of us who have revelled in the glories of Britain in 2009.
Hurrah!
TJW is an itinerant blogger who lives in East Angular. He grew up as a fascist, mellowed into a Tory and was converted to anarchism in his middle age by the Devil's Kitchen.
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Hammer 1 v 0 Nail – shake Yemeni maker.
so, what did you expect?
Brown doing the rounds of the media this morning, wondering how Ross Kemp keeps his head so shiny?? We need more than bloggers angst to change anything in this godforsaken country…..
Yemen is nothing new, it has been ticking away for a long time and was always bound to erupt again. Remember 1963-1967 and the Aden Emergency, and The Crater? See Wikipedia on Colin Campbell Mitchell of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Rather earlier it is argued, the Queen of Sheba came from thereabouts, and look at all the trouble she caused.
Anything we touch erupts Demetrius. Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Israel… the list goes on.
Subrosa January 3, 2010 at 15:03
Anything we touch erupts Demetrius. Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Israel
The odd thing is that, while your average Islamic nutter could not organise an orgy in Muslim Heaven, there is nevertheless a need to recognise that enough mad millions of the buggers could do a lot of harm.
I was always a fan of Mad Mitch. He had those staring eyes one associates with chaps prepared to storm machine-gun nests. Is he still with us?
YM x
Very worrying.
The Politicians, I mean.