Saturday 14/03/09

Are the Continuity IRA perchance part-time BBC continuity announcers?

Managed to get through the whole of Red Nose Day without a single person haranguing me for money. Mind you, that’s par for the course. Even if someone did manage to ask me the answer would be no, as I rarely carry cash around with me. I can literally go from one month to the next without touching the stuff. Guess I’ll have to phone in a donation.

Hay had a full check-up yesterday. She’s pleased as Punch now as she was told she has the metabolic function of a 29 year-old. Not bad for someone who is 44. I’m quite excited that I have a 29 year-old partner!

Take a look at this video on the accelerating pace of technology and information. On first seeing it I felt somewhat overwhelmed and even motivated by our achievements and the rate of progress. In a way I felt quite hopeful that mankind could solve anything that was thrown at us. However, when you look at the progression, it’s all to do with speed and not necessarily quality. I now feel more apprehensive than motivated. As the video says – what does it all mean?

I want to start a pressure group that lobbies for the inclusion of spurious characters in web and e-mail addresses. Just imagine how much more creative web addresses and e-mail addresses could be if we were allowed to include the humble ampersand. You could have a sensible e-mail address for a couple – Geoff&Gillian@MonRepose.com, for example. How about including character string 32 – the extremely useful white space? The above address could then be Geoff & Gillian @ Mon Repose.com – eminently more legible.

What plonker decided to throw out half the characters available on a keyboard when it came to using the internet? I can understand the slash and backslash as they are used for navigation within directories, but not others, except possibly from the perspective of some of them being used as instruction symbols within programming languages.

Benyam Mohammed will doubtless be justifiably (from a legal perspective) claiming compensation for being tortured. According to his claims he was in Afghanistan to see Muslim countries with his own eyes and to cure a drug problem – having gone there with no visible means of support. Now if I has a drug problem, the last place I’d go to have it cured is the very country that is the very source of the majority of the world’s opium and where drug addicts were regularly topped by the Taliban in a zero tolerance regime. The NHS can cure you quite adequately at no cost to yourself and without you risking being beheaded by a pyjama wearing beardie with a bandage round his bonce and an AK47 over his shoulder.

He is then caught in Pakistan boarding a plane to the UK with a forged passport. Why on earth would he need a forged passport and try entering the UK under another name when he was already a citizen of the UK?

Regardless of whether one agrees with torture under extenuating circumstances or not, I can’t believe people were put in Guantanamo without plenty of circumstantial smoke being around, even though there may have been no evidential fire. That’s the problem with terrorism – the normal standards of evidence don’t necessarily apply. I don’t think it’s wise to play by the rules all the time, because sure as hell your fanatical enemies won’t. Sometimes circumstantial evidence has to be enough - you just have to try and ensure that those who engage in clandestine or underhand operations are managed by a responsible agency rather than being freelance. Even James Bond with his licence to kill had political masters.

There again, if you do engage in torture, then perhaps it’s a bit facile to become a signatory to a protocol that says you don’t. Better to let the enemy guess and not sign anything that’s unequivocal. In a way, the Americans are engaged in a propaganda effort – officially denying they use torture, but allowing the leaking of information about torture being used. It makes the enemy think twice.

The argument that torture doesn’t work simply doesn’t wash if you read the evidence of state torturers of the past, like Paul Aussaresses, Paul Van Vuuren and Gideon Nieuwoudt. The only people you hear saying torture is not effective are those who have never tortured or been tortured. If it didn’t work, then Sheila Cassidy would not have identified priests who had helped Chile’s socialist opposition.

The first secret of effective torture is not divulging to the victim exactly what you want to hear. If you tortured me and told me to admit to a killing or being a wizard, I’d tell you exactly that. If I didn’t know what your preconception was I’d have greater difficulty second guessing you. The second is to try to avoid torturing someone who is blatantly innocent, as they will admit to anything.

Later: just realized I sound like an expert torturer with ‘previous’. There again, I’ve been married twice and seen experts in action.